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COMMENTS 



NEBRASKA BILL, 



VIEWS ON SLAVERY 



I."? 



CO_A^TRAST WITH FREEDOM ; 
ESPECTFULLY ADDRESSED TO THE FREE STATES, 

BT 

One acquainted with Sonthern !Ds(Uut!on^» 




ALBANY: 

J, MUNSELL, 78 STATE STREET. 

1854. 



.C.13 



C O M M E N T S 



NEBRASKA BILL 



Agitation, in 1850, movetl all Washington with its threaten- 
ing evils, and southern politicians exertcti every faculty they 
possessed lo create alarm; and all, and only, because slaves could 
not be carried, by their masters, to the newly acquired territory 
from Mexico, to work side by side with freemen, denounced, by 
Southern members as northern negroes! In loud and angry tones, 
it was contended that the south was to be robbed of its rights, 
and would separate from the union. It did, however, happen, 
that California escaped the curse of slavery from polluting its 
soil, and withering its energies and enterprise, and the union 
still exists. Yet by the management of Senator Foote, as con- 
servative of Mississippi, and also Senator Jefferson Davis, of the 
same state (conservative meaning, the retaining of all old forms, 
usages and abuses of slavery, and acquiring as many new privi- 
leges as the north could be frightened into conceding; secession- 
ist, to withdraw from the union), these two rivals in ambition 
succeeded by the sympathy of other factious scnatois in creating 
some alarm at Washington, and, at all events, a war of big and 
angry words thundered in the senate. 

Although feeble in health, John C. Calhoun (yet possessing 
great influence with the south) gave additional importance to 
the aspect of affairs. The debates of these conscript fathers, 
although divested of all dignity, by their violent and intemperate 



4 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. " 

feelings, operated upon the miiuls of the timid and undecided 
politicians. And Foole and his followers entered the contest 
with great address, evidently with a stronger desire to destroy 
their rivals, than in apprehending any disastrous results. Doug- 
lass, of Illinois, was made the unsuspecting tool of Foote, and 
anxious to be made a great man, and the mediator, urged the 
comprom'se of 1850, as forever to put at rest all slave conten- 
tions and agitations, and now proposes that very act to be used 
as the lever to entirely overthrow the Missouri compromise, and 
in violation of good faith, and to defraud the Indians of lands 
guarantied by a solemn treaty, and so opening a vast territory 
to peculiar institutions and speculative plunder. Foote, by far 
the ablest of his associates, did blow up a momentary tempest, 
which, acting upon the enfeebled health of Webster and Clay, 
these immortal men agreed to consult with Mr. Fillmore, and all 
three, anxious for the peace and prosperity of the union, united 
against the Wilmot proviso, even to favor the adoption of the 
fugitive slave law. And the most degrading act that stands 
recorded in the annals of civilization, is this peace offering of 
the north to the south. The dying efforts of Mr. Clay, agitated 
as he sincerely was, by fears of disunion, and Webster, strongly 
appealed to by many senators, at that eventful moment, were 
made to believe that the safety of the union depended upon them. 
Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, gave victory to the 
south, and audacity to their views, as expressed in the Nebraska 
bill. And wonderful as were the etlbrts of oratory of Mr, Clay, en- 
tranced as were all who listened to him, they were but the rays of a 
settin<'^ sun after a long life of unequalled brilliancy and splendor. 
Believing in the sincerity of all agitation being forever put at 
rest, a large portion of the north, pinning their faith to this long 
public idol, cordially concurred, while others, more far-seeing, 
wept over the temporary absence of firmness, which the vote on 
the fugitive slave act abstracted from the glory of our country. 
Benton, to his lasting honor be it said, was, in the senate, the 
champion of freedom; and his powerful mind, like the deep- 
rooted oak when contending against the raging storm, visited 



Comments on the Kehraska Bill. 



with all his power, and nobly too, the effort, but too successful, 
to extend the abuses of slavery by the hands of freedom. 

It now appears, a new attempt, encouraged by the success of 
the last, is to be acted over again at Washington. Foote, this 
time, in his speeches, eulogizes Douglass, as he urges him on 
with the Nebraska bill, to obtain, by new alarms, new conces- 
sions; wliile he (Foote), in his speech to the meeting at Stuyve- 
sant Institute, tells us that the press of the union is bribed, and 
every one knows it; and the old story — of the higher law sena- 
tor, and freesoilers, and abolitionists, and the agitators — is raked 
up, to prepare the public mind to give sanction to a new con- 
cession of slavery — blessings — this time, so bountiful, as to cover 
the entire republic! 

In opposing the Nebraska bill, all free states that look to their 
prosperity, are profoundly interested in its defeat. All freemen 
are deeply interested in opposing slavery from commingling 
with and corrupting the moral ties of life. And every man who 
loves his country, who honors freedom, must now, in firm and 
decided tones, stop all attempts of establishing slavery or its 
principles, on free territory — by free territory, we mean all the 
public lands of this union — and cover, with well merited exe- 
cration, the author of so base and daring a scheme to ruin our 
great republic. 

Illinois owes nothing to the south, for the grant of the public 
domain. All the agents employed in that railroad enterprise, 
have. been, no doubt, more than amply repaid, and will gild 
over the disgrace which is doomed to blight the senator's too 
bold ant! soaring ambition. 

iEsop's fable of the eagle and the crow, is an apt illustration 
of this attempt at power; and the disappointed, would-be presi- 
dent, will yet be the derision and sport of the community of 
freemen. He has entangled his claws in the wool, and his at- 
tempts at chattering and Hying, will replace him where he should 
be, to reflect on the folly of small men atf' mptinj;, wlcU power- 
ful men would be unable to accomplish. The great west, filliog 
up rapidly with a free population of Europe, escaping the op- 



6 Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 

pression of the tyrranny of wealth in their own country, can not 
desire to see the nabob planter, with his negro laws, like can- 
cers, spreading over the body politic, and degrading free labor, 
already presumptuously called " white negroes." 

If the sonth have the desire to separate, they can do so; we 
had better say, go, than be v/rangling year after year, about 
guaranteed rights, which we propose here to examine into. If 
they wish to separate, we shall cease to be their negro-catchers. 
If they wish to remain, they must understand that their chivalry 
must respect treaties, and the action of government must be upon 
equitable principles. It has been truly said by an English writer, 
that " half a century of freedom within the circuit of a few miles 
of rock, brings to perfection more of the greatest qualities of 
our nature, displays more fully the capacities of men, exhibits 
more examples of heroism and magnanimity, and unites more of 
the dim light of poetry and philosophy, than thousands of years, 
and millions of people collected in the greatest empire, under 
the eclipse of despotism. Why should we then wish to retard 
the progress of our growing country, by extending over its 
fertile lands, a system which degrades man, and blights his ener- 
gies, merely to favor a few rich negro owners, already occupying 
an immense portion of the union. 

A very sensible article, and one much to the point, is published 
in the Albany Morning Express, of 13th February, whose able 
editor wastes no words in long argument, but evinces a sound, 
shrewd, well-directed and comprehensive view of the Nebraska 
question. We copy it: 

" The territory of Louisiana was first occupied by the French, 
including, by claim at least, all west of the Mississippi river; it 
was then ceded to Spain. During Washington's administration, 
in 1795, we entered into treaty with Spain, for a place of deposit 
and export in New Orleans. In October, 1802, the treaty was 
terminated, and we were informed that the territory had been 
receded to France. Subsequently, as everybody knows, the 
territory was purchased by the United States, of the Emperor 
Napoleon, for the sum of fifteen millions of dollars. The pur 



Comments on the JYebraska Bill. 7 

chase was efre(ted by Mr. Jefl't rson — aiul a spUTidiil bargain it 
was, too. Tliere were in the territory, at the time of the pur- 
chase, about fifty thousand people of European discont, and forty 
thousand skives. Some of our wise invn at Washington insist 
that a law of slavery existed in the country at the time we ac- 
quired, which has never been repealed, and which could not be 
repealed without the violation of the treaty of session. But this 
is mere assertion, worth absolutely nothing, uidess the treaty 
itself is produced and the pretended law. 

"But, suppose the territory did come to us with and under a 
]aw of slavery, can we never repeal the existing law of a pur- 
chased territory? The idea is absurd. The act of congress 
known as the Missouri Compromise, is superior to all previous 
laws existing in the territory. Nebraska was a portion of the 
Louisiana purchase. The president, Munroe, and his cabinet, 
and both houses of congress in 1820, were, as we think, nearly 
as wise men as Senator Douglas, and even all his colleagues of 
the senate. We respect Gen. Cass very highly, but we can not 
allow his opinion greater weight than that which rests on the 
side of the validity of the Missouri Compromise act." 

It would be indeed a singular case, if, after paying fifteen 
millions of dollars to France for Louisiana, then inhabited by about 
90,000 people— 50,000 white and 40,000 colored— we should not 
be permitted, in our legislation over our thus acquired territory, 
to exercise a right which France had, and yet exercises over all 
her colonies. And did she not lately emancipate all the negroes 
of Martinique and Guadaloupe, on the broad ground of their 
being human beings, and entitled equally to the enjoyment of 
the same rights and privileges of their pretended owners, and 
for which she allowed nothing by way of compensation. 

How absurd, then, an abstraction for statesmen at W'ashing- 
ton to advance the opinion that the United States has not the 
right, in granting away its public domain — purchased domain— 
to stipulate the terms of its tenure. We have states to form, 
to meet the wants of the most unprecedented emigration in the 
annals of history, and the people who own this vast domain yet 



8 Comments on the JWbraska Bill. 

unoccupied, are told by their representatives — "you have no 
light to stipulate laws over national property." How absurd! 
We can give away lands for the promotion of any particular 
object, and subject to restrictionsj but territories we have no 
right to control, or to say, as we admit them to be states, *' you 
shall be free states or slav^e states." Foreigners and our own 
citizens thus settle the national domain, and rise above and 
superior to its laws. 

Political integrity is rare, demagogues are many, and their 
political animosities are violent, and, unfortunately, their virtues 
are mostly of a selfish character. Well, even if we have no 
right to make any stipulations for states as territories, we have 
a right to shut out slavery from treading the soil. We may le- 
gislate upon every thing, pretiy much, unless such legislation 
has the slightest, the most remote influence upon the " peculiar 
institution of slavery." This, we are told, is sacred — not to be 
interfered with. The treaties of the most sacred, solemn char- 
acter, we may violate; but slavery, alas, which was not permit- 
ted to figure in our constitution, " because holding property in 
man was not just," we arc nov?' told, was the guarantee of our 
confederation. 

The ex-senator Foote came to New-York, on his way to Cali- 
fornia, to warn his northern friends that the president was false, 
that the public press was bought up, and the thought of fac- 
tionists daring to agitate a repeal of the compromise of 1850, 
was, he confessed, monstrum horrendum! 

This compromise, let it be understood, Douglass contends, an- 
nuls the Missouri compromise. It is somesVhat surprising that 
the ex-senator, with his love of the poets, had not indulged in 
some tender effusion of poetry to proclaim, the mercy of slavery 
Perhaps, had Hale or Seward been there, he might have repeat- 
ed some of the oft-indulged, and always amusing effusions hurl- 
ed against these senators. But ex-senator Foote might, had he 
chosen, have told his northern hearers that the words slave and 
slavery were stricken out of the constitution by such an aboli- 
tionist as James Madison, because he would never consent to aC' 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 9 

knowledge property in man. This declaration of one of our 
most admired and illustrious stati'smcii — diSLTvcdly honored ami 
popular — was the expression of a democratic president, long be- 
fore Softs or Hard Shells were words used to denote the charac- 
ter of men or political parties. 

The French government long before \\\\s, or Seward was lorn, 
contended that "law, to be law, must be invested with authority 
i^reater than the subject whose obedience it challenges; other- 
wise law is only another name for injustice, and that morality 
which has not the authority of God as its basis, is without foun- 
dation." Slavery, therefore, being in opposition to'God's will, 
as repeated by our Savior, to "do unto others as you would be 
done by," has no moral foundation. For unquestionably no man 
in his sound senses would wish to be a slave. Now then, as 
the south thinks proper to come from the banks of the Mississip- 
pi, to instruct us in the north, as to what we are expected to do 
regarding their peculiair slave institutions, we regret that so 
shadowy a picture shoulil have been drawn by the cx-scnator, 
and, though an excitable little man, we have no doubt he has a 
large bump of benevolence to his slaves, although combative- 
ness has its mark close by. If southern gentlemen will come 
among us and make speeches to us on their favorite institutions, 
they must excuse us if we presUme to agitate for ourselves, on 
our own soil, and to even exult in our own institutions of free- 
dom. 

To do so will be the object of this article. To the word 
negro great opprobrium is attempted to be affixed, yet the river 
Nigris is much like the Mississippi, about as muddy, and having 
just about as many alligators swimming in its waters, and 
gives its name to the inhabitants as does the ]Mississippi, and, if 
we.are to believe Mungo Park and other writers, Africa affords 
many instances of educated individuals, modest and humane, al- 
though bowie knives and jiistols are not in vogue, yet coffee 
abundant and of excellent quality. The song written by a negro 
woman, in IMungo l^ark's presence, and who sheltered him and 
his companions during a long storm, is exquisitely beautil'ul and 



10 Comments on the JSebraska Bill. 



touching. The ex-senator is less friendly to f'ree-soilers and abo- 
litionists than to slaves. Such prejudices are as natural as tyran- 
ny against freedom. The northern abolitionist we will leave to 
the tender mercies of ex-senator Foote, and confine our remarks 
to " the peculiar institutions." 

The feeling against abolitionists is not confined to ex-senator 
Foote. John C. Calhoun, like ex-senator Foote, was an agree- 
able and kind-hearted man in all the private and social relations 
of life, yet his political feelings were so influenced by his dog- 
mas on slavery, that his opinions, like the shooting stars of 
heaven, were ever wandering from their orb to be lost in error. 
He, too, keenly disliked abolitionists and free-soileis, as well as 
all other Christians who opposed his peculiar institutions. 

Mr. Calhoun has told us that the relations of master and man 
have ever existed — existed beyond known time — and that ne- 
groes were bought and sold in the United States before any en- 
actment made them slaves; and he doubted whether there was 
a state in the Union ever passed a law on the subject. This 
opinion confounds master and man with master and slave, yet in 
the confession do we not see the history of slavery clearly de- 
fined? The African slave trade does not run back to unknown 
ages; it is of a more recent date, and confined to the American 
continent. Our great trade was principally under the reio-n of 
Queen Elizabeth. It is now about forty -six years since the law 
of congress abolished the slave trade on the ocean, and mark the 
then strong existing feelings of horror, when the penalty was 
death to all directly or indirectly engaged in the traffic. 

Very few of the slaves imported prior to 180S are now livino-* 
if any, inefficient. The great increase are born in these United 
States, the land of liberty; and by our declaration all men free 
and equal. Slavery, from its very first existence, was a thino- of 
oppression; a cold-blooded and abominable stealing of human 
beings — the violation of all international law — the tempt ings of 
avarice to overlook humanity — the act of the ruffian, seizino- 
upon his prey in a comparativly benighted land, and then to 
transport him, fettered and chained, during a long and loathsome 



Comments on the Jfehraska Bill. 11 



voyage, to sell hiin, guilty of no criuu-, the wretched, ever 
changing slave, with his children and their issue from generation 
to generation, sold as arc the cattle of the field. And well nii'^^ht 
we borrow and use the quotation of the ex-senator Foole, "y/or- 
rcndum monstrum.^^ 

Education is a blessing which can not too highly be apprecia- 
ted. It elevates the character of man, and, as the entire world 
must eventually be governed by the truths of the new testament, 
it is the foundation, the unerring star of all our hopes. 

Yet such is the inhuman character of slavery, that he who 
educates a negro is fined and imprisoned, and this blessing thus 
denied to slavery. The slave owner controls the body of his 
negro, and to his soul forbids the readings for which our Savior 
came on earth to bless mankind, and the beautiful precepts of 
that sacred volume, which every child shouUi be taught, as the 
most important study of life, is, from the want of instruction, 
unknown to the negro. 

And this is one of the benefits of a Nebraska bill. We see the 
benign effect of the instruction imparted in China, by a few 
missionaries, overturning the idolatry of a government which 
has ruled for ages in religious ignorance, and now its pagan 
altars falling before the truths of the new testament. The Ma- 
homedan, struggling for his national rights, fighting side by side 
of the Christian, and on his crescent banner is seen " the cross," 
to innoculate faith with unbeliefj the islands of the Pacific and 
all India are instructed in its consoling doctrines; the same bless- 
ings are carried to Africa, and in the United States the neo^roes 
are cursed by a slavery which forbids instruction, and thereby, 
to the great mass, the precepts of their salvation unknown to 
them. In Virginia, a respectable female and her daughter, are 
imprisoned for teaching at a Sunday school to little black child- 
ren, while in Alabama a negro is burnt at the stake, and in the 
writhings of pain he draws out the rivets that confined him, he 
is shot down — and all such acts without law to appeal to; and 
such privileges are required to be carried oat by the Nebraska 
biU. 



12 Comments on the JYehraska Bill. 

An attempt is now made to nullify the Missouri compromise, 
and, if the movers in the nefarious undertaking think that their 
iniquitous scheme is to be tamely and quietly submitted to, sad 
indeed to them will be their mistake. If the compromise of 1850 
was carried out, it was only because all future agitation was to 
cease; and thus did public opinion yield to it? Had, however, 
such details as the following then been published, no fugitive 
slave law would have disgraced our legislative hall, and who, 
that has a heart to feel, will not be moved with indignation to 
read of such deeds in our sbould-be-free America? We can not 
claim to be a model government. We must get rid of such 
"peculiar" acts, yes, before we can claim to be even just or 
merciful. 

Not long since we read of Epps compelling, by threats and 
promises, his negro to unite in the murder of an innocent man, 
to avoid paying a debt. Now, again, is a yet more brutal act. 
We extract it: 

" Horrible AIurder of a Slave — Beastly Cruelty. — Peters- 
burgh, Nov. 16. — Thomas Motley has been convicted at Alter- 
borough, S. C, for the murder of a runaway slave. It was 
proved on the trial, that the inhuman monster first shot and then 
whipped the slave. After which he put him in a vice, and 
tortured him. He then set him loose, started bloodhounds after 
him, who ran him down, mangling him horribly, and then, as a 
consummation of his fiendish purposes, he cut up the body of the 
slave, and fed the flesh to his dogs." The Charleston papers 
generally rejoice at the conviction of this fiend in human shape. 

The Pittsburgh Express, to which journal we are indebted for 
the above fact, understands that the negro was most cruelly 
whipped and beaten — one of his eyes having been knocked 
entirely cut. 

The Charleston papers, it seems, generally rejoiced at (he con- 
viction of the fiend in human shape. True, we are told that the 
Charleston papers condemned the dted; what else could a city of 
its intelligence, or editors of humanity, fail to do? 



Comments on the JWbraska Dill. 13 

But we ask, slmiild such a st;ile of things, l)y any po.ssihilitv, 
exist — that a human being may be beaten, hunted down, tor- 
turetl, murdered, his flesh cast to the dogs, and yet not dare to 
raise his hand in his own defence, for fear of being burnt at the 
stake? The law allows no self-defence to a negro; and, should 
an entire plantation, one or two thousand of his own color, have 
witnessed the act, not one could legally testify against tiie mur- 
derer, or arrest him, unless " trampling upon peculiar laws," to 
receive, for so doing, additional " peculiar vengeance." 

Had this poor, tortured slave, pursued by his bloodhounds, 
been stjong and fleet enough to have escaped, and he had fled to, 
anil had reached a free state, and, showing his lost eye, his lace- 
rated and bleeding back, with his quivering flesh torn from his 
limbs, and have asked charily, the fugitive law, " that assertive 
of those great truths that lie at the foundation " of American 
liberty (to use the language of Senator Foote, when speaking of 
the South), would denounce the benevolence of handing a morsel 
of bread and a few dollars to the slave, and saying to him, " Fly 
on, poor negro. Mercy has no impulse for you. The liberty of 
this union is linked with slave inhumanity. The congress of the 
United States has passed a law, allowing ten dollars more for 
your condemnation than foryour acquittal. Hasten onto Canada; 
when you reach her land, the flag of England will make you 
free; all colors there are safe; chains, and manacles, and shuckels 
will no more trouble you." The same law that governs the 
highest nobleman will be yours. Yet, just such advice, and 
prompted by feelings of piety and Christianity, guided by our 
Savior's command, would be here acted upon, of" do unto others 
as ye would be done by"; but, condemned by a lower jaw! 
Gov. Seward's higher law was but re-echoing the sentiments of 
the pious and eloquent Bishop Gregoire, in his defence of the 
revolution of San Doraingo. 

And the day is not veiy remote, when union of action among 
the slaves of the United States, will propound to their masters 
the questions, by what right am I a slave? What sin have I com- 
mitted, to merit such a destiny? What international law justifies 



14 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

a man's being dragged from his family, by pirates, chained, for 
months, and conveyed to a loathsome ship, and to another coun- 
try, to be sold? And what better right, they will ask, has he 
who purchased man so stolen, to hold him in bondage — in closely 
confined captivity, 

" There to mourn misfortune's rudest shock !" 

What other feelings than smothered revenge, can harbor in 
the bosom of the involuntary laborer? Whatever worldly things 
we become possessed of, if practicable in their nature, are at 
once claimed by the least shadow of title as legalized property, 
and though wrongly acquired, are seldom voluntarily relinquished. 
Their means of possession are lost sight of in our prayers. We 
repeat the comnaandment, " Thou shalt not steal," and as the 
offensive pill that is gilded over to hide its character, we so 
swallow the theft, to make it an apparent virtue. For daring 
to intimate cruelties less attrocious than we have referred to — 
yes, for simply intimating such deeds as the curse of slavery 
entail, what have not been the denunciations against the talented 
authoress of Uncle Tom. Yet what a privilege is hers, to 
be applauded by ages to come, as the advocate of an oppressed 
people and ill-used race. Mrs. Stowe will be cherished for her 
emanations of virtue and truth, when civilization will spurn with 
indignation, such rantings as uttered by Senator Foote. 

The sentiments conveyed by Uncle Tom, fall upon the 
heart as the warm rain of spring upon the earth; they cause 
compassion to start into new life, and although, by the seed 
which laid waiting the moisture of heaven, to germinate into 
the beautiful flower, weeds may shoot up; so by the side of 
humanity may be heard the breathings of inhumanity; for it is 
the nature of the many, to ridicule all sympathy. But, if pro- 
gress is the watchword of the times, Mrs. Stowe has launched 
her chariot with eclat, and, as that of the goddess of morn, will 
continue to shed a soothing light of mercy. We are changing; 
w^e have changed. The eyes of prejudice are unveiled, and 
many see who before saw not, and hear where they heard not; 



Comments on the JVcbraska Bill. 15 



reason at last begins to exercise her Avonttd power, anil good 
must from day to day disjilay its happiest results. 

Already, this interesting work has penetrated into tlie par- 
lors of fashion, as a missionary of truth, feelingly and elo- 
quently telling of things ^vhich those who move in the gay 
and luxurious pleasures of life, votaries to the selfish world, 
and hitherto biassed by the reviews of enlisted mercenaries, paid 
to misrepresent the negro character, are now made sensible of 
their wrongs. Humanity therefore awakes, and startles with 
horror, as she uplifts the before controlled and imprisoned im- 
pulses of nature, and the parent and the child, and even the 
stern man of society, weep together, as they run over the, alas! 
but too truthful pages, pointing out the daily occurrences of 
slavery. With pride, every mother recalls the history of Cor- 
nelia of the Gracci, and remembers with thrilling delight, when 
she was asked, by worthless vanity, where are your jewels, she 
pointed to her children, which with labor and pain she had given 
birth to, and with virtue and all the attributes of benevolence, 
she was rearing, to become the brightest ornaments of society. 
In classic lore, we find nothing more delightful than this ma- 
ternal elevation of soul. In those days, women were contented 
to be women, and not the wearers of pantaloons; and even in 
these go-a-head times they look far more fascinating with a 
sweet boquet of flowers, their own sweet emblem, than with 
cudgels in hand, the knock-down arguments of savage man. 
But in recalling to recollection the Roman matron, what can we 
imagine, more entitled to admiration, than Eliza, the submissive 
and devoted, almost white, slave, of the Uncle Tom. Submissive, 
with innate fidelity and love, to her mistress, yet when she disco- 
vered that her master was chaffering for the sale of her little 
child of affection, her only boy, all the tenderness and meekness 
of nature assumed a Christian character, resolute and fearless in 
well-doing, and, rather than see her child handed over to the 
brutal negro dealer, she resolved at once to rescue him, 

"Feelina: that 'twas no crime to love too well, 
To bear too tender or too firm a heart, 
To act a feeling, and a mother's part. 



16 Comments on the J\'ebraska Bill. 

And this young slave, contented, when devoting herself to a 
kind mistress, resolved to save her child. And where is that 
being who could not follow, with a throbbing bosom, this victim 
of oppression, as she hastened to a goal of liberty, leaping over 
the floating ice, as pursued by the wretches who stop at the 
danger, not daring to follow her, yet brooding] over the antici- 
pated gains of transferring innocence to the slave market of 
prostitution. And, to aid such a flying object of pity, guilty of 
no crime but the love of liberty, the fugitive slave law would 
denounce, to use the ex-senator's figure, "//o^Tcndwm monslrumf 

Putting aside the evil of slavery itself, what can be imagined 
more disastrous than slavery in free states? The honored son of 
an industrious farmer, who has not the means to own slaves to 
gratify indolence, finds himself the neighbor of a large negro 
nabob. His pride forbids his working side by side with slaves, 
otherwise he degrades his own high prerogative of a freeman. 
He soon becomes idle, and, sooner than he anticipates, he loses 
the cast in which freedom glorifies man. Look to the southern 
pine vroods; can the most fertile fancy picture a class of men 
more debased? They literally vegetate, they do not live to reach 
nor dare they aspire to any post of honor — are looked upon by 
the richer planter as an inferior race. Then, again, it can not be 
possible that Germans, and Swiss, and Italians, English, Dutch, 
and all the free people of Europe, coming to our shores, them- 
selves escaping from oppression, can wish to entail slavery upon 
others. Forbid the thought! Two hundred and fifty thousand 
men owning four millions of fellow men, on whose offspring the 
joys of liberty are never expected or intended, if in their mas- 
ter's power, to shed one ray of freedom — are they to control this 
universe? 

Senator Gwin, of California, is for giving a free, untrara- 
meled range to slavery. If so, a bolder insult can not be offer- 
ed to California. His constituents all laboring freemen, and 
by whose voices he is honored as a senator! Rich himself, a 
large slave owner, would he wish to put his negroes with his 
overseer as the companions of freemen? To work at the mines 
and at the diggins with free labor? If such should be the case, 



Comments on the J^ebraska Bill. 17 

we could only say, iiow quickly man clotlud in a little Lrit-/ 
power, forgets all others lor hiaisell". Such are the movements 
made by slave owners. 

The object ot" all governments should be to promote the pros- 
perity of the great mass of society, and not to introduce, into free 
states, principles to degrade its inhabitants by institutions at 
variance with the noblest sympathies of the age. The dark 
and hideous features of moral depravity should be curtailed, not 
spread. We live for reforms where reforms are needed, and purer 
and brighter should be the mantle of justice that we place over 
our states. 

- As may be shown, the slave states have been unfortunately 
extended by too many and easy concessions, and now we see 
the evil of what has been done; and if it can not be eradicated 
at once, it should, at least be prevented from growing larger. 
Sooner or later it must be. When Gen. Cass was the defeated 
candidate for the presidency, his idea of being a northern man 
with southern principles, caused his defeat. Politicians may try 
to blow hot and cold with the same breath, hoping not to otfend 
the philanthropy of the day, but it will not answer; the people, 
now, as in the days of JEsop with the satyr and the traveler, 
will not believe in the same thing producing two contrary etfects. 
Humanity, at all events, can not be thus defended, nor hypocrisy 
resorted to, without exciting the indignation of an intelligent and 
reflecting community. Those who adopt the maxim of Hudibras, 

" That he who fights and runs away, 
May live to fight another day," 

are a class of warriors w^e need not in the ranks of the warfare 
of freedom. The many estimable traits in the character of Gen. 
Cass, for the presidency, his acknowledged talents and his gal- 
lantry as a soldier, his opponents could not assail, with any suc- 
cess; but his being accused of yielding the noble feelings of 
philanthropy to southern exactions, will no longer, in the north, 
add to his fame or his influence, if advocated. 

The day has come when things must be known and supported 
by their real and proper names. The lights and shadows of life 
2 



18 Comments on (he JVebraska BllL 

nre so difTerent thai no statesman can mistake them. Even in 
that part of our country where slavery darkens the face of na- 
ture, and miscalculating selfishness encourages ignorance, the 
race of the family of the negro is looked to, by the purchaser, 
as the sportsman of the turf looks to the sire of the horse he 
purchases. And why should not the people of the free states 
look to the deeds of those leaders who have no sires in their pedi- 
gree of distinction, always dangerous on trial; and, alas, but 
too many of such are brought to the legislature, and to congress, 
whose qualities are found wanting and are ever bolting, worth- 
less, unreliable animals, on whom no faith can be placed. When 
we take up men without political honor, we must expect to 
be duped, and we should clearly canvass the worth of those we 
elevate before we raise them to the position in which they may 
do harm. In 1848, all must remember how eloquently were de- 
scribed the evils of slavery, and the necessity of reform. But 
some of these slippery politicians have outstripped, in their po- 
litical gastronomic qualities, the avaricious anaconda, by swal- 
lowing the entire Baltimore platform, slavery and all, and would 
no doubt have done a little more if any positive reward had been 
secured to them, on the ladder, worthy of their desertion. 

Such politicians disgrace the cause they defend; they sully 
the purity and justice of the principles they sport with. Their 
motives being selfishness, they twist and turn, displaying, as the 
chameleon, ever-changing hues to the new lights they appear in, 
and yet, strange as it is true, such is the infatuation of mankind, 
that a flash of wit runs away with reason, and political harle- 
quins transfer themselves, with unequaled assurance, on every 
new platform on which their changing tricks are exhibited. How- 
ever, but one feeling can govern the honest indignation which 
such conduct gives rise to, and in the end justice triumphs. 

The contest now is narrowed down to freedom or no freedom, 
humanity or no humanity; to justice or injustice, principle or 
no principle. All heretofore expressing an opinion unfavor- 
able to slavery, were at once denounced as abolitionists, and how- 
ever modest their opinions, the threadbare accusation "to disturb 



Comments on the jXthrasfia Bill. 19 

tlie soutli," was raised against them. To a certain extent the 
accusation was true, but only so, because the evils of slavery- 
are tiark displays of the same thing; nothing bright orchizzling 
belongs to it, no cheering ray of variety is seen in it, and the 
inhabitants of all civilization view it with abhorrence, as op- 
pressive anil dfuioraiizing. To the master spirit of all inifiuily — 
the devil — we altaeh the same horrors. These are all imagi- 
nation — fancy colors of torments. But slavery is a thing of 
earthly existence, ami elicits the same unvarying disgust, present- 
ed in whatever form it is seen. Our ever venerated, loviil and 
immortal lather of the country, strong'y expressed liis feelings 
against the injustice of slavery; and on the page of history, 
this sentiment will adorn his illustrious and glorious memory. 
The same feelings warmed the hearts of all the statesmen of the 
revolution, Madison, .Jeflnson, i atrick Henry, all the viitue and 
talent of the south, entertained, with sincere belief, the conviction 
tiiat all tiie states Av;'re to pass laws to emancipate the .slaves. 
It was a general understandin<x; and acting up to the moral ob- 
ligation, the north liberated their slaves. 

In the attemj)t to justify slavery, the monstrous and indulicate 
expression is indulged in, that the negroes, after all, were but 
baboons in their origin, and are only fit for labor. This is the 
phraseology of a class of society wiiose idefis and thoughts illus- 
trate their brutal feelings to those over whom they tyrannize, and 
remind us of an olil West-Indian trader, who, in reply to some 
remark of his com])anion. with whom he was indulging in a co- 
pious bowl of hot punch, observed, " that he would as scon eat 
a well-stewed negro as a moidcey or a terrapin, and he consid- 
ered all that are black skin of the same genus." A little, light 
mulatto boy, who was standing near by, unobserved by the old 
sea-wretch, instantly retorted upon the captain by asking " What 
race are you?" and b;'fore the astonished captain could recover 
from his surprise, he continued, " I should have to be very hun- 
gry, indeed, before I could hope to digest S3 tough an object as 
yourself; I think I should rather die, however well seasoned you 
might be." This quick retort, coming from the quarter it did, 



■90 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

created a general laugh, and, with a curse or two, the captain 
and his friend retired, and we saw no more of them after that 
evening. Had this reply, well-timed as it was, been made in a 
slave state, the mulatto would have been well beaten for his te- 
merity, in despite of the manifestation of his insulted dignity. 
Of the character of the captain, are the minds of the greater 
portion of northern pro-slavery wits, and, in fact, often very far 
the inferiors of those they revile. Pope says, 

*' There are whom heaven has blest with a just share of wit, 
Yet want a? much again to govern it." 

But such men have neither wit, judgment nor taste, and think 
that in the use of the term " woolly heads," they have reached 
the sublimity of a Milton, or the genius of a Shakspeare. 

The brain of a negro, the formation of face, and other pretend- 
ed differences, are not more striking or peculiar than the vari- 
ety which exists in the features of an Irishman or an Highland- 
er, a Frenchman or a German. The laws of nature powerfully 
designate nationality; but no law that we have seen designates 
which one race is justified in making slaves of the other. 

The barons of old claimed all the human family as created for 
their especial use, and complained of the violation of their just 
rights, when their vassals rose in the power and in the majesty 
of man, to overthrow long-abused privileges, which had bound 
them as subservients. The struggle was long. Many a poor 
vassal bit the dust, and many a lance was broken, before oppres- 
sion ended; but justice at last prevailed. It was no doubt a rare 
and delightful privilege to enjoy their vast baronial halls, made 
strong and splendid by their vassal's labor, with bastions frown- 
ing down upon the villages beneath, revelry and mirth and sump- 
tuous banqueting within, spreading far and wide along the Rhine, 
ancestral hospitality made glorious by the exactions of the proud 
baron, from the sweat of the people's brow. 

The vassals were, however, protected in their homes, and their 
■wives and families were their own, thus making even the feudal 
ages enviable when compared with this negro age. The old cas- 
tles, yet beautiful in their slowly mouldering ruins, with their 



Comments on the Jfehraska Bill. 21 



evergreen and soul-stirring legendary lore, raise their decaying 
but still massive walls above the mountain tops, adding to the 
picturesque scenery and grandeur of the enchanting fatherlands, 
telling of past ages. IMay the western world be to those who 
have sought our shores, an asylum of peace and happiness, wealth 
and education, free from the witherings of slavery, more oppres- 
sive than the feudal castles. 

It is but natural to wish to be free. Even the pampered horse, 
that slips his halter, as he escapes from his confined stall and 
runs to the green meadows, indulges in his pranks of freedom, 
dashing impetuously over the grass and grain, and snorts and 
paws up the soil, as he proudly looks around and inhales the air 
of heaven. If an attempt is made to check his liberty, he re- 
doubles onward his action, and as he speeds his way, kicks at 
his groom, if he attempts to catch him. The negro may be 
called goods and chattels, as " humanely baptized in the south;" 
but, in his peculiar character, it can not be denied that he has 
more reflection than a horse, and, withal, a human voice; and, 
if originally a baboon, he has become so often crossed and re- 
crossed, as now to possess a human soul. Spurzheira contended 
that it was to this process of change in the negro, his physical 
developments, as also his mental faculties, greatly improved, and 
not unfrequently surpassed the capacities of the original cross; 
and it may be so, for on plantations you find negroes, more 
noble, wiser and ingenious as mechanics, and better men in 
morals, than the overseers who direct them; certainly, greater 
powers of endurance on less costly food, and in the workings of 
nature, daily acquiring new ideas, and aspiring to new desires. 
Local laws, for a few yet brief years, may deprive them of edu- 
cation; but in the intercourse of the white man, like any two 
substances rubbing together, polish by their friction; so negroes, 
when sold from the old states, carry the information thus ac- 
quired to their associates. What we have seen and enjoyed we 
never forget; it becomes daguerreotyped and second nature. 
The day, too, may come, if oppression is carried too far, when 
a Toussaint, a Christophe, a Boyer, or a Pole, or a Hungarian 



22 Ccmments on the JVehraska Bill. 

refugee enthusiast, may spring up to head the cause of freedom, 
uiih the song of ''Ciiny nie back to ohl Virginia," "Carry me 
back to the dear tar state." 

National songs, fioni the time of Greece to the present, have 
had their moving effect. In every aspect in which liberty is 
presented, it has its charm. Who that breathes the invigorating 
air will deny its influence? The word freedom is supposed to 
robe in mercy the reileemed cajuive, and when so, quick as 
thought, it acts and vibrates on his senses, as the thunder of 
heaven in purifying the heated atmosphere of nature. Liberty 
is, indeed, an attKibute coming from the same beneficent hand, 
and to obtain which every oppressed people of the world are 
panting. By liberty is not meant wild, ungovernable licentious- 
ness, not contempt of laws and just restraint, but tempered rights 
of man, by the enactment ol' laws to control all alike; not to 
invest in one man the power oi life and deaih U]-on another, 
called slave, only diriering in color, and by excluchng such evi- 
dence as might establish innocence and punish the perjured. 
Now, the base acts oi' })laiitation life are hidden froui view. A 
negro may endure the tortures of Hdl^ and no one is the wiser. 
So long as the eye of the white is kej)t from the scene of cruelty 
carried on, the murderer escapes. It is this evil which requires 
the hand of mercy. As it is, " their justice is an idle mo( kcry." 

The negro's heart knows no resting j)!acr; for hitn, hope has 
no cheering spot to repose on; memory is filled with sorrows; 
play fid (lays of contented youth, he has none to lock back upon; 
withered and broken ties are his to mourn over; no oiitslietched 
hand welcomes him; no smile greets his cnming, biit many are 
the tears of parting, in tearing asunder all those sacied relations 
of life which are I'l eedom's joys. It he flit?s from a brutal mas- 
ter, the fugitive law pursues him, and his fate is like that of 
Uncle Tom; without care, after being whipped with inexorable 
cruelty, he is left on his bed of straw. 

"With a crushed and bleedins^ heart, 
Spurned by master, there he i'alls to die." 

To spread over the earth such scenes, is the Nebraska bill. 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 23 



lias man, stolt-n from liis native land, no rij^lit lo fly from his 
oppressor? We must suppose none, if the acts of congress are to 
be consiilered the oracles of a merciful (lod. 

Sad iiuic'cd, tlien, is the history and the fate of the poor Afri- 
can. He has no home. It", in the sprini; (hiy of joy, a rose bud 
is planted by the cabin of lo<^s or mud, and he has watered its 
earth in the care of its growth, he may have been dragged away 
by a negro trader or the sheritl', to pay his master's debts. If 
not himself, the wife, the child of his atfections, before he or 
they have witnessed its blossom, or regaled on its fragrance. 

Such are the blessings of American slavery. Thus are fami- 
lies separated, and life made a torture, as the drawings of the 
rope on the rack, each renewed pressure making the pang moie 
severe. But we are told by the heedless and unthinking, this is 
not oppression. No, it is called " usage;" and the white mother 
who presses the babe of her own Icvc and labor to her bosom, 
who receives the tender sympathy of her friends in the anxious 
hours of her sutlerings, but forgets the dangers of her accouch- 
ment in the birth of her child, and rears it in tenderness, sur- 
rounded by fashion and wealth and comforts, has, but too ol^ten, 
the philanthropy to talk of the happy life of slavery, which 
makes the black mother " goods and chattels," and her only com- 
forts, which should be her children, are, when nourished into 
life, taken from her and sold. 

The husband who has saved his hard-earned gains (after his 
task is ended), to impart some little comfort to his wife, not 
unlikely is sold from her, and carried away, while she yet lies 
on her bed of suffering, the " breeding object of slavery." The 
mandate of " they whom I have united, let no man break asun- 
der," SQcms to be words so little important, that the refined 
Christian can dispense with their effect. And how many such 
do we hear boasting that they have not read Uncle Tom, be- 
cause it is a work against slavery, and usage has sanctioned it 
in the south. One thing is quite certain, we see many a south- 
ern planter, who, with a black face, would have made a very 
ugly negro; the same remark may apply to the north, or any 



24 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

other country. It must, however, be an admitted fact, that on 
the plantations you see the proportion of intermixed colors rapid- 
ly increasing; they may thus soon become wise without educa- 
tion, and not unlikely become free, without any aid but their own 
resolves. Knowledge creates power, and brings with it a free 
agency; it unfolds the destiny of life, as enjoyed in freedom, 
while it opens the volume of instruction in proclaiming and dis- 
criminating betwen good and evil, and points out the way to 
reach the one and shun the other. Our feelings to this class of 
the community seem to be influenced by all possible prejudice; 
because they are not on a footing of equality with the whites, 
and at once we jump to the conclusion that they would be better 
as slaves. You are told they can not vote in the state of New 
York, unless they have freehold to the extent of $500; that few, 
therefore, vote. All this proves nothing more or less than in- 
justice, and that the white man is valued $250 more than the 
black, by an unjust law. 

Illiberality exists, wherever mean prejudices prevail. Not 
long since, in some parts of Germany, the Jew was subject 
to a toll at the entrance of every town, and by the side of the 
castle his rate was written down, a hog, so much; a Jew, so 
much. 

In one of the large towns of Prussia a destructive fire oc- 
curred, impoverishing a vast number of its inhabitants. Sub- 
scriptions were opened; the king and several princes of inde- 
pendent duchies subscribed, with what was considered great 
generosity. A Jew banker of wealth subscribed a million of rix 
dollars, the one-third of all the entire sum collected. A fewyears 
afterwards, having occasion to pass through the same town, the 
banker was refused an entrance, until special permission could be 
had. 

Now, these prejudices, with more general education, have dis- 
appeared. In Holland, in Amsterdam, a Jew was not permitted 
to inhabit a house next to a Christian, without a special permis- 
sion of the neighbors to the right and left. Unkind feelings are 
excited here against the blacks, in a great measure, by misrepre- 
tient..tions of editors; but it is nevertheless the fact, that education 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 25 



IS every year improving their condition. At this period of our 
national existence, we are tohl that slaves are the cement of our 
union. If it had been so, the declaration of independence was 
then a lie to mankind, and not less so is it now. Our noble 
statesmen opposed the idea of property in man. Hut as ihe 
general understanding was that slavery should soon cease, in the 
meantime slave representation should be allowrd to the slates. 
Mr. Madison was certainly opposed to the use of tlic word, to 
imply property in man; indeed, all the south then concurred in 
the same view of the subject. If, now, any allusion is made to 
slavery, the quick answer follows, do you wish to sanction the 
danger of the union? The bugbear of alienating the south from 
the north is set forth, as if the opposing of injustice is likely to 
endanger a nation's power and glory. All who had studied the 
politician's heart, and traced his wiles and tricks to court popu- 
larity, smiled with pity at the efforts, in 1850, made to create 
alarm. Benton, fearless and honest, was found at his place, 
watching the intriguers, the firm advocate of justice. He list- 
ened to Webster's last speech, and he opposed Clay, evidently 
wondering that such a man should be influenced by the croak- 
ings of Douglass and Foote; and, in their denunciations of the 
abolitionists of the north, he saw would-be-presidents in the 
foreground of the picture, less sincere than their admirers. So 
artfully were all the pullers of the wires in Washington and else- 
where hid from immediate observation. 

The fugitive law to save the union! Had Gen. Taylor lived, 
no such remedy would have been recorded. When reason in- 
terposed, folly cried fanatic; and this popular institution of the 
south triumped. If you wish to destroy the union, the trained 
band party exclaimed, oppose the fugitive slave. If you con- 
demned slavery, with cool effrontery you were asked, do you 
wish amalgamation? Do you wish to keep alive discontent; to 
oppose the opinions of W^ebster, Clay, Foote, and all the excited 
south? 

The star of many whigs and numerous cliques, was Daniel 
Webster; and the star of Webster was the presidency. That 
some leaders are fanatics, is not unlikely; but others, again, called 
abolitionists, to their honor be it said, stood firmly on the plat- 



26 Comments on the JYtbras/ca Bill. 

form of Christianity, and valiantly pleaded for common justice; 
with the New Testament for Iheir guide, tliey opposed slavery. 
We have not, and we do not intend to suggest, that negroes shall 
be brought into society; that they shall be placed, pell mell, at 
all public places, with the white population; but, that they shall 
have their appropriate stations by themselves; and, if whites 
choose to commingle with them, and they choose to admit them, 
well and good. This, while public feeling draws a distinction 
of color, and prejudice prevails, is all we can hope for. As the 
law of the state gives them the benefit of education, and thus in 
time will do much to improve their condition, and make them 
set a proper value upon their character; for cultivation of mind 
will set a value upon any human being. Because we do not 
think proper to admit any particular class of persons into our 
society, it does not follow that we should deny to them legal 
rights, religious rights, and the same pursuits of happiness of 
ourselves; or, more especially, that we should do all we can to 
di-grade them, by taking from them all incentive to elevate their 
moral, intellectual, religious character, and pecuniary position. 
They should no more be stolen and made slaves of, than the 
white man; and it is one of the absurd inconsistencies of false 
notions, of national folly, that we should, with Quixotic chivalry, 
be ready to buckle on the armor of war, to protect a subject of a 
foreign state, who comes voluntarily amongst us, notifies his in- 
tention to belong to our generous republic, and then leaves us to 
wade through blood, and spend millions for his protection, and 
yet degrade our institutions of freedom, by holding stolen men 
in slavery, and their offspring slaves, till the last trump shall 
sound, unless, acting as the vassals of Europe, they shall rise in 
their own power, and, as San Domingo, assert their own rights. 

The struggle of the slaves for their freedom, must come to 
pass. Evils, more serious than the south apprehend, await their 
destiny. Emancipation, as was established in the state of New 
York and other free states, might avert the horrors which the 
Nebraska bill 's preparing for our country, and may save an 
enormous expenditure to the country. 

Our western world is peopling by men of industry, by emi- 
grants who have left and are leaving their native land, to enjoy 



Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 27 



all the enlarged ble^isings of freedom in their new lioiaes. I'ew, 
and very few isolated cases may occur, of their purchasing slaves, 
to make men what in a measure they have escaped, by leaving 
the old continental world, and the t)r:uiny of self-gorged, kingly 
capriL;e. 

In this age, an ellbrt for freedom might not be oi)pnst.d by 
freemen. We are not an Austrian govermnent, with a ilaynuu 
to head its armies; nor our people ready, as a Bcdini, to adminis- 
ter the scalpinix kni;"o, to the condemned martyr in the cause of 
his liberty. In this lanil of boasted civilization and freeilom, it 
is a foul stain u})on the nation, that any man may have the 
power to commit a murder upon a man of another color, and 
escape all punishment, if he but perpetrate his deed of horror 
beyond the reach of the white man's observalion. Violent jias- 
sions may, casually, lead the infuriated raadinan to expose himself 
to the law's penalty; but tlie fiends in human form, will look 
around before they commence their whetted gloatings of revenge; 
and such are the stone-hearted overseers, on the outlawed, lonely 
plantations. And are the freemen of this. country and Europe, 
who come to our bosom, to cease to cherish and venerate free- 
dom, and to see their labor of honor made inglorious by the dark 
tide of slavery surrounding and engulfing them, by the overflow- 
ings of inhumanity? 

The declaration of our independonce, which all emigrants have 
read at times, told them that all men on our soil were born free and 
equal; and it is now their duty, as it should be their pride, to 
raise their voice against any violation of plighted faith, or to 
sanction the opening of the floodgates, by \vhich the rich negro 
owner is to circumvent, with the outpourings of his surplus ne- 
groes, the home which should alone gather round it the smiles 
of social content. 

Hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Europe are yearly 
swelling the western states, and instead of senators, such as 
Douglass, being permitted to turn from thtir hearts the heaven- 
born throbbings of liberty, rather let additional lands beset apart 
for school funds, so that the best of education may be given 
gratuitously, to the children rising into life, making them in- 
structed, enterprising, virtuous men, capable of guiding the plow, 



28 Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 

the army, or the state. Such is, eventually, to be their proud 
destiny. 

The free states do not envy the wealth which is acquired by 
negro labor, in slavery,- but, while with the rest of the civilized 
world, they consider the continuanceof slavery nothing else than 
the stronger ruling, for a time being, the weaker, and at best a 
precarious possession, would suggest, that in studying prudence, 
it might be a good and wise policy for the south to desist from 
comparing their slaves with our freemen. These comparisons are 
the more ill-timed, inasmuch as a now vast many of the south, 
who have acquired great wealth, were very humble adventurers. 
We mean nothing disparaging by the word adventurers, but 
would say, that as mechanics, and less elevated grades, they left 
their homes, and in so doing, have built up the south and them- 
selves, much to their credit and honor. But while indulging in 
the favorite epithet of northern slaves, they should look back to 
their fathers, and trace to their fathers' occupations, when they 
will find, while they themselves are now at the top of their ladder, 
politically and commercially, the family ladder had been long 
trodden on the lower rounds. In our country, happily, labor is 
honored, and the highest title men can enjoy, is to be honest; 
and the harder he labors to acquire wealth, the more will be his 
undisputed and praiseworthy estimation and respect in society. 
That poor, free blacks are to be seen in the north, no one pre- 
sumes to question the fact. Many are the poor of all classes and 
colors, and of all nations, who may here be found destitute; 
more, however, from natural indolence, than from want of em- 
ployment, to gain a comfortable livelihood. It is the case, also, 
with many whites, and such will ever be the unhappy fate of 
some of our fellow creatures, all the world over. But we are 
told that such things do not exist in the south. Certainly, they 
do not; and for several reasons. First, negroes are not permit- 
ted to leave their plantations; they are not free agents (but can 
and do beg stoutly, when chance offers). Secondly, their time is 
too valuable to lose; and, thirdly, if found strolling about, they 
are taken and cast into prison, which they exceedingly dislike. 
Still they are continually running away, to escape the lash of 
the overseer. When taken out of jail, they are ironed and sent 



Comments on the JYebraska Bill. 29 



home, and, as an example to others, are punished with from 100 
to 300 lashes, at the cost of ilcj-h and bjuod, whirii are more 
cheaply healed by a little washing of salt water, tlian would be 
the master's purse, having to pay protracted jail fees, and hosing 
in the bargain, the time of the negro. 

But the white gentlemen of the Pine woods, designated Pint-y- 
\voodsmcn, who are free agents, arc, in fact, more wretched than 
our poor people, and yet with enjoying greater public advan- 
tages. They squat on the public lands, for which they pay 
nothing; no taxes; have plenty of wood to burn; they girdle a 
few trees, then scatter a little turnip seed and collards, plant a few 
sweet potatoes, build miserable log houses, milking such cows as 
they can pen, by dividing the milk with the calves, during part 
of the season. This class, degraded as they are by the rich 
planters, are far less intelligent than our most abject; less indus- 
trious, less worthy of respect, than our free negroes; and well 
they may be, when labor is dishonorable; and it necessarily fol- 
lows, that they are more jealous of the rich negro lords, than are 
our poorer classes, of their more prosperous. Here our poor men 
have education, and, at all events, their children, forming the 
rising generation, will enjoy the blessing of education. Every 
avenue to office, to wealth, will thus be open to them. 

How different in the south! In the Pine woods, the people 
are free by name, but humbled in spirit by the nabobs, whose 
riches, so far from benefiting degrades them, consequently disin- 
clines them to all agricultural industry, which, in our free states, 
adds so essentially to the health, beauty, contentment and riches 
of society. It requires some ingenuity to fall upon a suitable 
word to express, with all proper consideration, their honorable 
distinction. In the north, very many would be caught as tres- 
passers, but in the south, where vast forests are barely dotted with 
their abodes, they are likely to enjoy, for an age, undisturbed 
possession. Lean bacon constitutes their winter supply. Their 
habitations are squalidly miserable, within and without. They 
are a second class of chivalry, between the planter and the ne- 
gro, held in great contempt by the latter, yet, as white men, ex- 
ercising the right of manual power over them. Since the social 



30 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 



and industrial existence of our blacks and Avorking men, are so 
frequently spoken of, and by time-serving sycophants hired to 
misrepresent them, we would ask if any of the two hundred ne- 
groes who waited on the banquet given at the Metropolitan ho- 
tel to the president of the United States, Mr. Pierce, would wish 
to be carried to the blessings of slavery. Did they look like 
stupid men? or did the president, himself, appear better clad or 
happier? Gold chains and watches in their pockets, and proba- 
bly the far greater number having money laid aside for their ad- 
vanced years. Any spectator, from any corner of the earth, 
would be apt to conclude that no one, whatever m.ight be his do- 
mestic associations, would wish to return to bondage, even in its 
most alluring aspect. Such starving, thriftless men are receiving 
eighteen and twenty dollars per month, and hotel perquisites, re- 
galed with a daily table of luxuries, from the very nature of sla- 
very unknown, and only to their masters on their travels. True, 
all can not live in hotels; yet, as cartmen, as waiters in private 
families and on farms, and by general labor, and as seamen, cooks 
and stewards, they are sure to find equal compensation M'hen they 
require it. Though traduced, they perform their duties faithful- 
ly to their employers, seldom found in quarrels, in our grog-shops 
or creating riots in the streets; civil in their deportment, free 
from revenge, no carriers of pistols and bowie knives, disturbing 
the tranquillity of society by such cowardly armings. It is a pos- 
itive fact, that the negro's nature is free from revenge, and he 
becomes attached to his employers when fairly treated. With a 
different nature they would all cease to be slaves. At our public 
schools, they learn with usual facility. It is true, they have sepa- 
rate classes, but subject to the same rules and regulations of other 
students, and receiving equal attention and kindness, throughout 
the state. We hear of no rude assaults on the civil, political 
and religious rights of other denominations; they, in a word, 
display none of the fiercer passions common to our whig, demo- 
cratic and shell assemblies; and, considering the little commis- 
scration and philanthropic manifestations toward them by many 
of the coarser individuals of society, it is quite surprising how 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 31 



few negroes are found in our hospitals, and liow few nlative 
criminals. 

Their color is God's will, but never announced as a crime. 
Prejijdices aj^aiiist tliem will lessen in time, and truer lij^lils radi- 
ate upon them. As a peoj)le, they are perfectly happy; living 
together, and a])preeinting, ^vhile feharirig, freedom's blessings. 
Wc arc not certainly more refined in the United Slates than in 
France, in Europe, \vhcre such a man as Dumas, full of thought 
and profound wisdom, gathers around him all that is intelligent 
and interesting, to constitute brilliancy and delight in the litera- 
ry world, and such a man in the United States, might have shared 
a fate as cruel and revengeful as Uncle Tom's at the hands of the 
incarnate demon, Legree, of the Red river. 

But, for the south, sullicient is the evil for the day thereof. 
They may manage as they please — threaten at disunincn — sepa- 
rate if they think pro{)er — but, should they do so, the light of 
but few days would be seen ere revolution would cast otl the yoke 
'of bondage. And for negro owners, it will be the darkest day 
that ever shed its gloom on their land. The south walk by sense, 
as all sensualists do that walk in the sight of their own eyes 
alone, and will admit of no other discovery but by their own rule 
of judgment. Yes, a mere dawn of liberty when least expected, 
may be followed by a resistless outbreak. San Domingo may be 
renewed on a larger scale; the slightest breath might kindle a 
flame more effectual than the mountain light which AVilliam Tell 
ignited for the benefit of Switzerland. 

\Vhile one spark of reason guides the councils of the south, it 
^vill indeed be wise and discreet to cease in their senseless ra- 
vings, to compare our talented and industrious mechanics with 
their slaves. These sinews of our moral worth, these architects 
of our greatness, rise with the magnificent structures they erect. 
They are the foundation of our national wealth and greatness. 
For them the beneficent wheel of fortune is ever revolving; iis 
bounties are inscribed on the proudest monuments of the munifi- 
cence of the free north. 

S. Girard of Philadelphia, was a native of Bordeaux, and 
commenced his career as a poor seaman, and afterward settled in 



32 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

Philadelphia, where he accumulated, as a merchant, and then a 
private banker, a fortune of from ten to thirteen millions, the 
greater part of which he devoted to public charities, leaving but 
a few hundred thousand dollars to his distant relatives. These 
magnificent edifices erected to promote education are richly en- 
dowed. John Jacob Astor was as humble in origin, and a native 
of Germany. A splendid public library, and a vast and beauti- 
ful building to contain it, with a large yearly income, speak his 
life of industry. Besides this he left many millions to his chil- 
dren, his fortune being, it is supposed, fully equal to that of Gi- 
rard. 

Vanderbilt, the king of steam navigation, was captain of a 
ferry boat from New-York to Jersey. He, too, rose from humble 
life, and now is honored and respected; the owner of the first 
great steam-yacht, of 3000 tons, navigated by his own genius, 
and his own wealth, for his own and family's exclusive pleasure, 
to visit the different nations of Europe, thus displaying his 
own enterprise and his country's glory and greatness. Many of 
our wealthiest citizens, of no early promise, owe their fortunes 
to a laborious life of honest industry. New England in a body 
may be said to be made up of such men, the pillars of human 
greatness. Boston, and all Massachusetts, is covered wuth gifts 
of large private benevolence. Industry, intellect and charity, 
there go hand in hand, modest in such acts, and the unpretending 
and deservedly designated cradle of liberty, and sheet-anchor of 
constitutional rights. Her great merchant, Gray, was a shoe- 
maker. Col. Perkins, who has just died, leaving $' 1,800,000, was 
a tin-man by early profession, and, while living, the munificent 
dispenser of great and noble generosities. If we turn to our 
statesmen, they do honor to the age. Our manufacturers and 
merchants shine in their benevolence, numerous as the stars of 
heaven, and by their enterprise and skill, while they have built 
up cities and towns on every water course and navigable stream, 
made our lakes equal in their commerce to our ocean trade, giv- 
en life to manufactures, they have made ihe south in a measure 
what it is — greatly inferior to, yet im})roving by the capital of 
northern enterprise. 



Comments on the JVebras/ca Bill. 33 

The nanu'S, wiili priilL' we have ineulif^iiLiI, were oiue our 
poorest citizens, and by their own industry and .skill achieved 
their fortunes; and innumerable are the instances of wealth which 
from thousands to millions of dollars are the attributes of our 
northern slaves. Proud indttd is the condition of escutcheons 
thus honorably acquired anil nobly won. 

When a northern slave (which southern ignorance delights to 
call our laboring classes.) rises to leave his home for his day's 
labor, as he greets the morning sun with prayers of gratitude and 
welcome, and kisses his sleeping children, he blesses them, fiel- 
ing confident of their safety in liis absence. He has all the joy 
and pride of freedom. The little tlock, at night-fall, as he returns, 
hasten to gather around him, again to receive his caress of love, 
while the fond wife, and gentle mother of his children, prepares 
the evening repast, and the modest hearth's palladium with its 
bright flame warms the tea-kettle and prepares the night supper; 
the bright-eyed children playfully strive to catch a lather's ap- 
proving smile. Unsullied, unpolluted are such endearments of 
home. The hand or the dread of no dealer in human flesh is 
seen lurking round to rob him of his wife or his ollspring; those 
blessings which constitute the household idols of atfection, the 
bliss of matrimony, are safe. No master here intrudes to mar 
their pleasures, to sell them; no wretch to brutalize over them; 
free as the air they breathe, as the wide world they survey, equal 
as man with man, they cheerfully perform their respective pur- 
suits of life, cherishing the hope that their children may rise 
hereafter to occupy, if they do not themselves, more prosperous 
positions in life. And, if we look to almost all our public 
offices, they are filled with parental expectations thus happily 
realized. Such are our noble northern slaves — proud monuments 
of our nation's mighty power. 

The city or the village bell calls them to worship, and the 
church of their own building receives their Sunday prayers; their 
little ones attend the sabbath schools, and grow up with Christian 
feelings, to remember and aid each other in the after pursuits of 
life. The public schools are alike the rich and the poor man's 
fountain of intelligence — the light of progressive information — 
8 



34 Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 

to guide them in tlie path of civil and political instructions for 
their earthly pilgrimage, and in moral and religious duties on 
their way to heaven. Here they receive all the useful elements 
of learning, which constitute freedom's blessings. These are the 
watchmen of our country's glory and prosperity. Here no mother 
or daughter, in the Christian performance of Christian virtues, 
in the merciful occupation of teaching the neglected child to 
read, is thrown into prison for so sweet a charity. Here no slave 
is burnt at the stake at the will of a master, because in despera- 
tion he raised his arm against his oppressor, to ward off an attempt 
upon his own life. Here all the relations of domestic life, are 
the offsprings of liberty, sacred and undefiled. 

To the genius of our mechanics we see the pennants of com- 
merce floating from the tall masts of our sightly ships, the carriers 
of national wealth, interchanging, on every ocean of the world, 
the varied products of our own soil for the industry of other re- 
gions of the globe. These messengers of international know- 
ledge and science are the acquirements of mechanical learning 
and refinement of arts. And to such have some of our city ed- 
itors applied the insolent epithet of northern slaves. Men who 
without any peculiar merit have by such suffrage reached the 
high offices of state and general government, and enjoyed the 
position of the honorable, who otherwise would never have been 
known as such. 

And it is high time that such base libelers should be rebuked, 
in their double-faced political dealings. It is time, too, that 
upright men, in their several respective branches ofj industry, 
should occupy their share of public favor. Wisdom or know- 
ledge is not alone confined to the lawyer's brain; good common 
sense and sound integrity, is what we need in our legislative 
halls. Our attorney generals are the law framers, or should be 
made so to act, in properly framing our laws, as engrossed — 
honesty and purity of character is what we need. 

The present crisis, and the rights and power of the free states, 
call now imperiously for changes; for reason seems to be lost in 
the selfish struggle of " party shells" — how ridiculous such per- 
versions of man's dignity — and all parties ready to adopt any 



Comments on the JVchraska Bill. 35 

measures to rob the treasury, cheat the country, and thru call 
upon party to applaud tluir (U-votion to our star-spatit;led banner, 
the effuljieiice ol' whose l^lory is so da/zliiii^ to public admira- 
tion, that the peccadilloes committed under its shadows are over- 
looked. We may now, indeed, use the oft qurited exclamation 
of Cicero, with great propriety and fitness: " 0, tcmpnnr! O, 
mores! Quousque abufurc patcnlia nostra!'''' 

When we see demagogues and senators, Induenced by their 
prejudices and selfish aspirings, ready to violate treaty compacts, 
and seek flaws of their own creating, inade under fal^e and 
treacherous promises, we can not but perceive that slavery is at 
the root of all evil. It is the serpent that roils i!se!f around the 
southerner's heart, and darts at all who come within the sound of 
its envenomed sting. The seed of liberty alone, can prevent 
this fjreat evil from desolatinjr our land, inlendcd lor the iidiabit- 
ance of freedom. We may go on, advancing in all the charms 
of civilization, but, say the south, slavery must bean exce[>tion; 
that property held by some 250,000 owners, must rule 23,000,- 
000 of freemen; and claims a right to spread itself, w ith its self- 
willed laws, over all purchased and conquered territory. Slaves, 
of themselves, have no votes; no political liberty. Civil liberty 
the slave has none, that implies the security of person and pro- 
perty; religious liberty, he has none, for the privilege of wor- 
shiping God he has not the right, but with the consent of his 
master. He is but goods and chattels, and torn from homes, to 
be peddled about by the negro trader, with as little compunction 
as the fishmonger sells the inhabitants of the deep, from door to 
door; and these, with their peculiar laws, are to follow every new 
state, and have southern rights, by the Nebraska bill, over the 
whole union. 

', A modest fancy ! And our northern men have been called north- 
ern slaves; and our colored people have been pronounced, by a 
few editors, as better in slavery than free. As the bird of the 
cage, fed, sheltered, and even caressed, wearies in his captivity, 
even so does the slave in his imprisoned cell, for what other is 
plantation liberty; and what bird, could it be reasoned with and 
speak its wishes, •would not rather take the freedom of the open 



36 Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 

air, the great canopy of nature to range in, and beat its plumes 
in the storms of autumn's chills, even the frozen blasts of winter, 
only give its pinions free, and unrestrained his will, unheed- 
ed would be the tempest, and then in the sunshine to sing, 
in gladness, the songs of nature to the opening spring, under 
the thick foliage of the trees, or to be voiceless, wingless, or 
dead." And there is no slave so insensible to the blessings of 
freedom, who would not rather incur all the cares of providing 
for himself and family, sooner than exist a degraded, wretched 
object of sale, from one hour to another, through life's long vista, 
sad with visions of torturing cruelties; even the wild beast has 
an instinct to run from dangers it has once felt. No white man 
approaches the cabin of the poor negro, that the souls of all 
within do not instantly throb with feelings of anguish; instinct- 
ively the children crawl to their parents, as if a parent to them 
was a protector! We remember calling at the hovel of a slave, 
with her family of six or seven children rolling on the floor. 
We asked the ages of her children; with the rapidity of light- 
ning, and with imploring tones, as she fancied we came to 
purchase her or her children, she pitiously begged we would not 
separate her family. The poor, wretched being, literally shook 
with fear, and could scarcely believe us, when we assured her 
that we had no intention to disturb her — our visit was only curi- 
osity and friendly. We threw a few shillings on the floor of 
hard earth, which the children scrambled for, when she said, 
"Oh! master, you don't know how much we suffer." Her coun- 
tenance, at first of fear, became cheerful, and she would have 
made a powerful study for the sculptor or the painter. 

And yet editors tell us freedom is not a blessing. Can such 
men expect to die, and hope for pardon? The slave, to hire out 
now, earns $300 yearly, found and clothed. This would pay 
clear gain, to husband and wife, $600; and if others could hire 
at this rate, they could as well feed themselves, and earn that 
amount yearly; and it requires more sagacity than we possess, 
to understand why the slave's labor in the master's pocket, should 
make the slave happier; for he who paid the hire would take care, 
to the utmost of their ability, to work them, and the hire, if brought 
into the pocket of the negroes, would provide to them many 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 37 

comforts they hear of, but never feel or obtain. Fox said, that 
" the love of political liberty was not an error. But, if it is 
one, I am sure 1 never shall be converted from it — and 1 hope 
never will. If it be an illusion, it has brought forth more of ihe 
best qualities and exertions of the human mind, than all other 
causes put together." Such were the sentiments of one of Eng- 
land's greatest statesmen. 

Ex-senator Foote, in his speech in New York, bclicred tluir 
principles (of course, southern princij)k'S, for his address was to 
northern men, too mean to have principles of lreedoMi),anil with 
southern principles, which were essential to the happiness and 
glory of the country, the Nebraska bill, he foresaw, would bring 
up again the Wilmot proviso, and hoped such an impending 
calamity might be averted, as resistance to it. Not a free soiler 
should hold office, if in his power; these were sentiments rising 
above party and personal ends, that our noble institutions might 
be perpetuated. Madmen applauded. 

A purer light than comes from dissatisfied southern agitators, 
is now to guide the free states. \Vhatever was our intended 
compact with the south, we must respect it as it was clearly 
understood at the time. But to tolerate the contemptible idea, 
that the slave states are forever to frighten the free states of the 
union, violate at pleasure the compromise of Missouri, just as 
their notions dictate, and that petty demagogues, elevated far 
beyond their merits, shall attempt to gain popularity for the pre- 
sidency, by courting the south at the expense of the free states, 
is altogether a vain delusion. That day has gone by, and the 
tombs of obloquy are dug for the northern doughfaces, who lend 
themselves to foster, directly or indirectly, such views. Like 
the dew drops on the mane of the lion, will the north now shake 
off her faithless representatives, and their fall will be as that of 
the discarded arch-angel — to rise no more. We, alas! in no age, 
or in no time that we remember, have seen so inllated a display 
of arrogance and vanity, as the Nebraska agitator, who declares 
his determination not to run as president. Had he, but a twink- 
ling little star as he is, in the great firmament of democracy, the 
assurance of his pars nohilefratrem, to such a post, what would 
his assurance amount to. As with the compromise of 1850, he 



38 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

would find a flaw in his ridiculous promise ready to annul it, 
even should not the bursting^ fate of the frog's vanity have been 
his, ere another chance of public confidence was extended to him. 

Humiliation, surely, was bitterly administered to the free 
states, in the fugitive slave law; for, while we must aid in 
being catchers of slaves, if called upon, our free colored people 
in the south, if shipwrecked on their coast, while seeking the 
hospitality and sympathy which marks the characters of all civil- 
ized nations of Europe, even amongst the Bedouins of the desert, 
in the south are liable, by its laws, to be cast into prison, even 
taken from vessels lying at anchor, and doomed to the same fate; 
and if not redeen)ed after. a certain time to pay jail fees, they 
are advertised and sold, their fees deducted, and the balance of 
their sale goes into the state treasury. Do they find this in the 
constitution? While exacting, by legal enactment, our services - 
in their behalf, their barbarous law is continued; and if, after 
yeais of captivity and brutalities, our freemen are accidentally 
discovered, or enabled to impart to their friends their fate, and 
their release, after enormous cost and trouble, is obtained; they 
aie refused all wages or compensation for their long and hard 
services, sacrifices and lacerated bodies. Such injustice of the 
south was not provided against; no law was passed by congress 
to protect them, and to guard them against abuses, and 1o restore 
such as are still in the captivity of slavery; no law was passed 
to pay their expenses to sue for their liberty; no extra ten dollars 
given to a judge, who should release them, as given for the con- 
demnation of tiie fugitive slave. The one having rich masters, 
whose duties shouhl be to watch their slaves, are compensated; 
the other, poor, helpless, unfriended, and unable to rise against 
the weight which cruelty inflicted upon them; but, being free- 
men of the north, are unworthy of assistance. 

Such laws were made for masters, who, like some of our editors, 
believe slavery better, for blacks, thanj freedom. Mr. ex-senator 
Foote speaks of our press being bribed. If the negroes were raising 
$100,000,000 a year by the white man's labor, you would hear 
of fVwfr anatht m:is agninsi them. We should no^ read in our 
newspapers, thai our streets were crowded with idle, indolent, 



Comments on the JVcbraska Bill, 39 

worthless negroes, when every man w ho has, for forty years past, 
been in the habit of walking in the great thoroughfare of Broad- 
way, in New York, the largest city of the American continent, 
the fourth city of the world, can attest to tlie fact, tliat seldom 
is a negro beggar seen. Occasionally, a blind man, with a band 
round his hat, with the notice of, " I am a blind man," indicat- 
ing his ailliction; and, occasionally, a poor sailor is seen, with 
his hat in his hand, standing on the stumps of his thighs, and 
thus blighted by frost on our coast, standing by or sealed on the 
pathway, modestly but silently appealing to the humane passer 
by; but even this is seldom the case. Why, then, do we falsify 
their condition. 

And while such are the facts, our streets are crowded with 
naturalized citizens of all climes, speaking all foreign languages, 
from the little sweeper child, to the graduated wrinkles of old 
age, all imploring, and perhaps all deserving pity. Could these 
be legally made slaves, stolen from our streets and sold in the 
south, the voice of some editors might be heard, saying they 
would be better in slavery — not from the third to the fourth 
generation, but for all generations. 

It is hoped that our hitherto passive submission to the laws 
inflicted upon our free blacks, will awaken a sense of our national 
rights. It is time that the chloroform slumber should cease to 
operate in deadening the sensibilities of humanity. But it is 
nearly spent. Such outrageous deeds can not for ever be tole- 
rated. 

It is a singular fact, that while denouncing the abolitionists, 
and vaunting the delights of slavery, and wretchedness of 
northern slaves, that the slave of the south is ever ready to en- 
counter all dangers, to hazard all difficulties to merely endeavor 
to make his escape from the inviting, fascinating enjoyments and 
blessings which southern writers poetize, and assure us are so 
alluring; where every gale is peace and every grove is melody, 
and where the very earth is enameled with flowers for the 
benefit of the slave. An unsuspecting listener, or a reader of 
faith, who knows nothing of slavery — who has never seen its 



40 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

workings, would fancy the negro hovel answered to Goldsmith's 
picture of 

" The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, 
The varnished clock, that clicked hehind the door, 
The chest, contrived a iJouble debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a set of drawers by day; 
The pictu-'es, placed for ornament or use. 
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose, 
The hearth, except when winter chills the day, 
AVith aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay." 

Alas, no such enchanting privilege belongs to the slave in the 
southern land of light and flowers. Yet to impress on northern 
minds such things, runaway negroes, our papers have told us, im- 
plore of their masters the privilege to return to renewed bondage 
from northern misery, from high wages in Canada, to exclaim 

"All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, 
Is propagated curse. A voice, once heard 
Delightfully, 'increase and multiply,' 
Now death to hear; for what can I increase 
Or multiply, but curses on my head." 

If a free negro leaves Charleston, he can not return to it to see 
his family, but is made a slave. How melancholy an inconsis- 
tency! They will not permit the foreign wretched man, starving 
as they state, to return to visit the paradise he may have left, 
to witness the contrasted joys, which in a moment of disquiet he 
had fled from, although wishing again to revel in that, after all, 
blessed condition of contentment, and which, they tell us, makes 
slavery so much more joyous and enviable; and the negro who 
runs away, if caught, is unmercifully flogged for his presumption 
and curiosity in wishing to see how ragged and wretched free- 
dom makes a man. 

It may truly be asked, of what sort of materials must that 
man be made? How must he be tempered and put toge'her, to 
justify slavery? We lebelled against England, and a revolution 
for causes less important than slavery, resulted in what history 
anti the age dignities, and every American bosom feels to be a 
glorious revoliiiion; a triiunphant expan.'-ion of human rights. 
We taimt England with having introduced slavery, and we con- 
li;iiii- it. r<' vi.Miis (o our •cxolutii.iti, li,;- colonies pi. lilitjii d the 
luoihcx counliy to get lid of slavery; this was a general appeal, 



• Comments on the JNIiroiA-a Bill. 41 

and all the states wished so disastrous an evil uprooted from the 
soil. But the evil is far greater now. Previous to, and at tiie 
close of the war, all our greatest men coneurred in the necessity 
of an early termination of slavery; all looked to that ohject. Jt 
\vas understood. The now free and eminently prosperous states 
of the north carried out the implied agreenient, and so, perhajis, 
would the south have done the same thing. Negroes then were 
much less valuable; but, at this crisis, when good faith on the 
part of the south was expected, the culture of cotton was intro- 
duced. It was found to be productive, and the south no longer 
thought of slavery but for raising cotton. And then arose the 
clamor of slavery rights and constitutional compacts about slavery, 
as if slavery was a principle of the constitution which excluded 
the word slave; and it delights the south to clamor against our 
northern negroes, otherwise our white laborers, 

A New York editor evinces a willingness to give and take 
half and half with the south. We will make a few remarks on 
the propriety of so much liberality on the pajt of the editor, who 
has either sold his negroes or yet retains them, but seems to feel 
a little sympathy for the benefit he derives from their labor or 
their sale, and was no doubt thus governeti in his promptings. 

To return to England. Our government, by the revolution, 
became possesse<l of all the crown lands and wealth which 
England owned in her colonies, and a little more by confisca- 
tions of private property. We therefore took from her the abi- 
lity of emancipating the negroes, which ability became vested 
in our hands, and as we, particularly the great mother breeding 
state, Virginia, had been foremost in her cry for emancipation, it 
was reasonable to expect their independence would have accom- 
plished the disappearance of an evil loudly denounced by them, 
as di>astrous to their prosperity. The justice of emancipating 
the then small number of negroes who had been stolen from 
Africa and landed and sold in the colonies, was an atfair exclu- 
sively of our own. In the other colonies of England, long since, 
she hcis abolished slavery, and an act as glorious to her as our 
revolution to us. She also pairl twenty millions to Spain in 
aiding ihem in their defense against their war of the continent, 



42 Comments on the JVchraska Bill. 

on condition of an abandonment of the slave trade, and in arfdr- 
tion bhe paid to the Brazils some millions to stop that traffic, 
and finally paid one hundred and fifty millions to her colonies to 
put an end to slavery. And all the British realm acquiesced in 
paying so large a sum to efface from the national character the 
continuance of a system of injustice to the many for the benefit 
of the few. 

As an evidence of the implied understanding that slavery was 
to cease, what stronger proof do we need than the language of 
the declaration of our independence, sent forth to the wide world 
as the basis of American liberty. Our just philanthropy was 
applaudedj the European world extolled our magnanimity and 
justice. It was so spoken of, so referred to, and it was so in- 
tended. 

The law of 1807, to go into eflfect in 1808, put a stop to the im- 
portation of negroes under penalty of death, and reserved the right 
to regulate imigration from state to state. But the culture of cotton, 
as we have observefl, unexpectedly introducing a profitable em- 
ployment for negro labor, all idea of emancipation was lost sight of 
in the thirst of gain, and since 1808, now forty-six years, the south 
has in fact enjoyed an exclusive privilege in negro labor, a mani- 
fest bounty; for such northern capitalists as had a desire to be- 
come cotton growers, were compelled to pay a greatly enhanced 
price for negroes, in consequence of the law of 1808, which put 
a stop to all importation, under an implied understanding that 
emancipation was to follow; and the dishonorable neglect to 
carry out faithfully the agreement, gave advantages to the south 
which could never have been intended. And now a request is 
made that the increase of forty-sjx years of negro breeding (over 
the entire United States), shall be allowed to slavery. 

Mr. Webster, in making his speech in the senate in relation 
to the compromise of 1850, observed: 

" It may not be improper here to allude to that — I had almost 
said celebrated — opinion of Mr. Madison, ' You may observe, sir, 
that the term slavery is not used in the constitution. The con- 
stitution does not require that fugitive slaves shall be given up; 
it requires that persons bound to service in one stale, and escap- 



Comments on the JVchraska Bill. 43 

ing into another, shall be clelivcrccl up.' Mr. Madison opposrd 
the introduction of the term slave or slavery into the constiliition; 
/for he said he did not wish to see it recognized by the constitu- 
tion of the United States of America, that there coulil be proper- 
ty in man." 

What more conclusive evidence is needed of the implied un- 
derstanding, than so dislinguislied a statesman as Mr. Madison 
asserting that he would never consent to the right of property 
in man, and thus striking out of the constitution the words .slave 
or slavery. But this I'eeling was general, ami afterwards ovt-r- 
reached by cupidity. 

It is thus conclusive that tlie fugitive slave law never applied 
to slaves, but that "persons bound to service in one state, and 
escaping into another shall be delivered up," applied to white ap- 
prentices. And, in virtue of a willing misconstruction, was the 
infamous law of 1850 inflicted upon humanity, with ten dollars 
bounty to encourage condemnation, and costs of recovery &.c., 
paid to the slave owner; and while enacting a law so evidently 
based on misrepresentation and fraud, leaving/zTC WacA.v subject 
to abuses in the slave states, of tlie most cold-hearted brutality. 
And can we, boasting of our freedom, our greatness, our superior 
refinement, not only wish to retain but to extend the greatest blot 
of evils? Can we call ours the home of the frie? In the free 
states, the s])ircs of religion are scarcely ever lost sight of, and 
yet we make no effort to do away with slavery, no ellbrt to arrest 
its pestilential extension over our states, peopling with a German 
race, an Enf^lish race, a French and Italian, all leaving the old 
world, to seek liberty and freedom in this. 

Nobly, thus far, have the fathers and the sons of our aiiopted 
citizens, rallied to the rescue of liberty from the chains and 
manacles and screws and fetters of slavery, and we are rejoiced 
to think and feel satisfied they will never dwell in their mid.st. 

The idea of abolishing the lesser evils of society, and retain- 
in"- the "-reater, is a national absurdity. If by anv compromise 
we are bound to leave si .very as it existed, by any real or im- 
plied agreement, we must confine it to its loundai ies. As Christ- 
ians, as wise and humane law-givers, we are called to spare Ihe 



44 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

country the disgrace of property in man, with interminable bond- 
age. In scripture, our savior said, let the dead bury their dead, 
meaning, let the unbelievers mingle together. Let wisdom now 
dictate the same response. Let those who oppress man immortal 
as themselves, keep together; and let the homes which are to dot 
the western world of liberty, and^ the graves which are to sur- 
round us, be moistened by the tears of freemen, and the dews of 
merciful heaven. 

Let free schools, social content, equal rights, knowledge and 
God's word, be the basis of population. Let not slavery taint 
the soil. Let not the lash, nor the groans of suffering and the 
cries for pity, which belong to the nabob of slavery, be heard in 
the fields; let not the thorns and briars of slavery desolate the 
earth, but let the plants of freedom adorn it; and let the well- 
clothed, well-fed laborer go to the field merry as the joyous lark, 
to plough, and sow, and gather his harvest. 

We remember to have read in the Columbia (Ga.) Democrat, 
that the mother of a white girl named Fann, who was sold by 
her father as a slave, to a man named Jackson, had succeeded in 
rescuing her daughter from a state of servitude. Two years she 
was treated as a negro slave. The humane editor denounced the 
act as base; but was there no inhumanity in the peculiar laws of 
a country so callous to justice, or the ideas of colors, so near, nay, 
white itself being sold, accursed usage, to shades of slavery invad- 
ing the liberty of a white woman, cast into a slave-pen of cruelty. 

The following is taken from the Louisville Gazette: "Found, a 
female child, about eight years of age, bruised on the head, 
marked on the neck, the face and the breast, the shoulders, the 
arm, the thighs, the legs, by an instrument called a cow-skin. 
The humane master may recover his property by applying accord- 
ing to law. This was training up a child in the way it should 
go." These are old advertisements. It is not our intention to 
liere enter into special abuses, but to arrest its spreading. While 
there are many excellent and kind-hearted inhabitants of the 
south, ornaments to any society, so are there of a less refined 
class, infialed by an ignorant and vulgar aping of aristocracy, 
brutes over their negroes, and some acting as nine-tailed bashaws. 



Comments on tke J^Tebraska Bill. 



who instead of believing as the Maliomcdan Koran, tliat all 
Christians are dogs, and only lit to serve tlic worshiper of the 
mosque, so look upon tlieir negroes as born to be slaves. 

One of our distinguished presidents of the United Slates, a 
native of Virginia, in reply to an invitation to dinner on the -llii 
of July, used the following language: 

'*A11 eyes are opening, or are opened, to the rights of man. 
The general spread of the light of science has already laid open 
to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankiml have 
not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few 
booted and spurred, to ride them legitimately, by the grace of 
God." 

Such were the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson; they need no 
comment. John Randolph, while living, was a negro owner; 
when dying he emancipated all his negroes, thus showing that 
he believed negroes had a better right to be free than to continue 
in slavery. A vast many others have had the same opinions and 
acted in the same way. 

As to the cry against abolitionists stealing, and here and there 
enticing negroes to run away, we can only say, such men are 
madmen; the cause of justice can not be advanced by such acts. 
We broadly contend that negroes were originally stolen, contrary 
to all the laws of nations; and wrong thus commenced continues 
a wrong. Situated as they are, the only question to solve is, 
how lono- jt will be before rebellion or revolution restores them 
to the freedom their fathers enjoyed. Our object is to put a stop 
to the spread of slavery in the United States, and the south in 
the mad career they are following, should well impress upon their 
recollection that San Domingo, with a comparatively small popu- 
lation of negroes, when they determined to rid themselves of the 
booted and spurred gentlemen who had ruled over them, laid on 
their soil forty thousand French soldiers. In the warmth of pa- 
tiotism, they determined, if they had to wade tiirough their own 
blood, they would be free. And San Domingo was free. Had 
it depended solely on its white population and their resources, 
liberty would have been instantaneous. And let once a rebellion 
comiaence in the south, what becomes of the one hundred millions 



46 Comments on the Jfebraska BUI. 

of its exports, its cotton wealth? It would be but as a tale once 
told; resources it would have none. Sophistries can not prevail 
against reason. It is part of the delusive folly of the south that 
one white man is equal to a plantation of negroes. The Alge- 
rines reasoned in the same manner, when they saw our once gal- 
lant people driven by hundreds to hard labor, having no other to 
overlook ihera than the nerveless withered arm of a wrinkled old 
man. Necessity, and their forlorn condition, made them submis- 
sive; yet ill iVeedom, what would not those captives have ac- 
complished? 

The greatest enemy of the south at this day, is Senator Doug- 
lass and his Nebraska bill, and it may prove a firebrand of deso- 
lation. 

"The storms yet sleep; the clouds still keep their station, 

The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb; 

The bloody chaos yet expects creation. 

But all thinijs are disposing for thy doom; 

The elements await but for the word, 

Let there be darkness, and thou grow'st a tomb." 

A distinguished orator of South Carolina, during the nullifi- 
cation excitement, at a public meeting, in his' address to the 
pubHc said: 

" Sooner than witness this land of light and flowers polluted 
by the tread of a northern barbarian, or the glittering of a merce- 
nary bayonet, sooner would I witness South Carolina one gore 
of blood, and but one monument to cover its inhabitants." 

Gen. Jackson eflfectually put down nullification, and instead 
of daikness, and so much chivalry being covered by one monu- 
ment, the people quietly lived in the light of prosperity, and 
bowed their lofty heads to the majesty of the laws. 

Instead of that illustrious president, the great man of his day, 
slavery has now to contend with freedom, before whose shrine 
all ideal differences of party will vanish, and a strong pull, and 
a pull altogether, will be found to tighten the sacred rights of 
liberty. Instead of using the language of John Marshall, "ac- 
cursed be the hand that first planted slavery on the virgin bosom 
of Virginia," we may appropriately say "your own selfish and 
inhuman cupidity makes no effort to relieve itself from the breed- 
ing bosom of calculating traflfic. Knowledge now surrounds 



Comments on the JVehraska Bill. 47 



Virginia, instructing ench year the negro, in louder and louder 
tones, to inquire " Why am I a slave, when all else that sur- 
rounds me is free? " The same feelinpjs would soon in the separa- 
tion of the union, spread its infpiiriuL,' voice from one sla\f .s!;iff 
to another. 

Our senators of the south ask, "What would you do with the 
negroes if we liberated them? The answer coraes naturally; 
they would gladly take care of themselves. They arc now hired 
out by their masters" at two to three hundred dollars a year, 
clothed and fed, and they would get as much for thcms(dves. 
Those who own no negroes would be glad to hire them, and bet- 
ter their condition by so doing. 

In character with the query of the senator of South Carolina, 
is the remark that is often made, "Look to Jamaica!" And 
this reminds us of a conversation of a very rich, amiable old lady, 
of that island, who owns a pimento plantation. *' Why, sir," 
said she, "you have no idea of the fallen state of the island. It 
•was once prosperous, society was brilliant, and planters could 
afford to pay high commissions to their factors, and large wages 
to their overseers, and visit Europe — many resided entirely in 
Europe — but now the negroes since their liberation will not 
positively work, they are so lazy, unless they get unreasonable 
iL'ag;es. Now, you see, the island deserted, the lands mortgaged 
in England for more than they are worth, many a once rich 
planter now poor, and their worthless, lazy negroes actually can 
earn enough in two days' labor to support them for a week. 
You would be surprised; the miserable negroes have now actual 
mahogany chairs and sofas, and Yankee clocks over their chim- 
ney pieces. They leave off working when it rains, and of a 
truth, they indeed have become a nuisance. Why, sir, it costs 
me twice as much as it did to gather my pimento crop.'' 

In our climate, we remember many a month of August, when 
panting with heat, all still and motionless, we kept our doors 
closed to shut out the hot air, the perspiration flowing down our 
face, and otherwise as moist as if we belonged to the water-cure 
establishment, undergoing the oblations of that science. We 
read of many persons killed by the stroke of the sun, and having 



48 Comments on the JVebrrska Bill. 

been in the south, we could not but think of the cotton fields, 
without a tree to offer the grateful shade of its leaves, to the 
bareheaded, shoeless, negro, with a broiling sun beaming upon 
him some 100 or 130 degrees, while the overseer with an um- 
brella over his head, and his whip in hand, not unlikely a \^ hiskey 
bottle in his pocket, urging on the panting goods and chattels 
to their labor. At such a time it is quite natural the negro 
would like to indulge the comfort he had often seen his master 
enjoy, in lolling on a comfortable easy sofa. 

Freedom is thus oppressive. In two days' labor, he gets lux- 
uries he never but had seen as a slave, and smokes his se^ar at 
his leisure the rest of the week, because his white once-tyrant 
wont pay him fair wages to work for him. 

For this the pro slaver exclaims, the island does not export 
more than half what it was used to do; but then the idle nabob 
had to live at great expense, and the slaves had to figure up the 
cost. Things have changed. Justice from the earliest ages was 
represented as blindfold and had the scales in one hand and the 
sword in the other. When oppression weighs too heavily upon 
a people, the sword is resorted to to correct the evil. In the most 
arbitrary governments, oppression finds sympathizers in civil- 
ized as in savage nature. San Domingo took up the sword; Ja- 
maica was relieved by a just government. What the sequel 
may be with our growing black population, history will tell. 

The Nebraska bill reminds us of the following lines: 

"Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, 
Earth for whose use — pride answers, 'tis for mine," 

But the south may be mistaken. W'hile the manacled slave is 
driven about from state to state for sale, with clanking chains 
proclaiming his degraded and abused condition, no man sleeps 
in peaceful tranquility or security. 

Nations to be permanent must be free. To rule over the heart 
benevolence and humanity must stand foremost. The divided 
nation falls. To impart the holy flame of liberty, men must love 
the institutions by which they are governed; you must benefit 
and not oppress a people. 



Conuntiits on the .Xihraska Bill. 49 

We are, by the Nebraska bill, called ujion to carry oppression, 
•which is synonymous with slavery, over 13G,700 square miles, 
equal to 17 states. No, this can not be; all this is r^iuired lor 
Germans, Danes and Swedt-s, for Cireat Hrilain, for Framt-, lor 
Hungary, for Switzerland, for Holland, Italy, Belgium, all the 
continent; they come to our country with every wave that breaks 
upon the sea shores, and we need a part of this land, for a free 
homestead to every free citizen who now needs a home to 
shelter him. But a fearful evil hangs over the south, li is ihe 
imprisonment of colored seamen, in the course of trade to hc-r 
ports. The question is rife in international discussion. It will 
not answer for Souih Carolina to say to foreign jjowers, " \\ c 
^vill imiirison your colored seamen, and sell them, if not taken 
out of jail in time to pay jad fees." Nor will it answer Jor our 
government, to say, we can nut interfere with the laws of the 
" peculiar institutions of slaveiy." You must submit to have 
your colored seamen imprisoned; and when the foreign nations 
say, then we will take our own redress, for the general govern- 
ment to reply, oh, no; that you must not do. Although South 
Carolina is an outlaw, in their views, and does wrono- to inter- 
national usages, she is nevertheless a state of our union, and our 
shield of protection and our flag hangs over her safety. Such a 
policy has been, to a certain extent, attempted, but resisted (our 
own seamen have submitted, or rather they have been so basely 
treated), but will France or England? Never, never! 

France, like England, has ever been jealously alive to her 
rights. The humane and beautiful model empress of Europe's 
noblest monarch, now blessing France by her clustering virtues, 
has already raised her voice against slavery; and changed, in- 
deed, must be the policy of noble England, when her people 
long tamely submit to such an indignity, the memorials of jjer 
past greatness will be shrouded in mourning, and her honored 
flag will have lost its enchanting spell, and the wide world would 
cast a long and heavy sigh over her fallen greatness. She has 
ever protected her subjects, and is not likely now to desert tbem, 



60 Comments on the JYebraska Bill 

while we are adopting a still bolder policy towards those who 
merely notify their intentions to become our honored citizens. 

The negro population is nearly 4,000,000, a population re- 
quiring for its support, to each grown person, twelve bushels of 
corn yearly, and two to three pounds of bacon, weekly, male 
and female, accustomed to work alike in the fields — from infancy 
to manhood enured to hard labor and domestic misery in com- 
parison with the white man's fare; of this population, one-half 
or 2,000,000 are females, and if we put the average ages of life 
at seventy years — from that of eighteen to sixty years, and sup- 
pose only 3,000,000 of slaves, this would leave effective men 
for soldiers^ while the females and children capable of raising 
many times their ow-n wants, and their husbands', in their absence. 
In the event of war or revolution, such a body of desperate men, 
strugglng for liberty, would call for a strong opposing force. 

From 1790 to 1850, shows that our negro and colored popu- 
lation have kept pace closely on the whites, notwithstanding 
our enormous importations. 

Yet the north, though, in a measure, controlled by negroes, in 
their being entitled to representation, have no right to discuss 
their evil consequences; by that influence, however, the war of 
1812 was declared, our vessels were captured on the ocean, 
burnt or condemed, the captains made prisoners, and their private 
adventures lost; the war ended, peace was restored, and runaway 
and captured negroes ivere paid for — and why paid for, when 
all else was unpaid. 

In the south, the productive man is the negro; the lord of 
creation is the " white man idler." Yet he who has no opera- 
tive value, claims the life, the labor, the liberty of human beings, 
and the sole control of their souls, as property, as slaves. If a 
negro can read, his master may say, I can't have your cantings; 
your Bible only makes you indolent. I wont have it on the 
plantation. Here is Tom Paine, a better book for you. The 
negro must give up his Bible. Legree, in Uncle Tom, so rea- 
soned. Few such exist, yet some so act. The position of the 
master with his slave is supreme. His power knows no control. 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 51 

It is a power which may compel the slave to do just as he is di- 
rected to do, lor ^ood or for evil. It" a neijro is ordered to do 
any act, it must he done. If ho refuses, his life is (hwiued to 
heavy inflictions, to heavy toils beyond his ability to jierforra; 
and on failure he is whipped, locked up, niallreate<l, sold. And to 
avoid this, he is generally ready to do any thinf^ he is told to do. 
We will illustrate this remark. Some years since, on our way 
to Tuscaloosa, in the state of Alabama, its then capital, wc 
passed by a town of Claireborn. A large crowd was collected 
around the court house. On asking the cause, we were told that 
it was only the trial of a negro, for his life. Curiosity led us to 
walk in, and listen to the trial, while our dinner was preparing, 
and our horses were resting. The counsel, on the part of the 
defence, we soon found was a very able and eloquent man; his 
name was Bagbey, and afterwards was in the United States 
senate. The prosecuting lawyer was a young man, acting for the 
state, and afterwards the attorney general for the state of New 
York, Mr. Willis Hall, of a bright mind and ardent manner. 
Two planters had quarreled, living on, we think, adjacent planta- 
tions. The one was then in the court house, quite unconcerned. 
He had hired his negro to shoot his adversary; for this Christian 
virtue, the negro was promised ten dollars, a complete new suit 
of clothes, of his own fancy. The deed was effectually exe- 
cuted. The poor victim of cowardly revenge was shot, while 
seated before his fire, at the side of his wife, in his log cabin on 
the plantation. All the facts of the negro's receiving money 
and clothes were confirmed by a negro woman, to whom the 
negro man had communicated his intentions; and on the testi- 
mony of the negro woman (the testimony of black being good 
against black), the negro was condemned and hanged; but negro 
testimony not having any weight against a white man, the mas- 
ter, the real murderer, escaped. Should we, we again ask, 
living in a free land, permit society, by any possibility, to be so 
tolerated. Bad men exist in all communities; we do not men- 
tion this in intended disparagement of the mass of planters 
generally, but only to ask if the western man or the northern 
man will permit the soil he inhabits, to be thus debased, by the 
infaraoiig Nebraska bill. 



52 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

By the indiscreet action of the slave states, these peculiar in- 
stitutions may involve the nation in war, and the free states be 
called upon to expend hundreds of millions of dollars to sustain 
the war, yet we have no right to express an opinion. The 
cruelty of " their peculiar institutions" may drive their slaves to 
rebellion, and we may be called upon to mow them down at the 
cost of our own pocket and our lives, yet we have no rioht to 
express an opinion upon slavery as a national advantage or a 
national curse. Twenty-three millions of free citizens are thus 
to be controlled by less than two hundred and fifty thousand per- 
sons owning some three to four millions of negroes, and be made 
the slave catchers of their unhappy negroes, when flying for 
their libertyj "their goods and chattels," to be handed back to 
a merciless master, in most instances to a brutal negro trader, 
gloating in the Shylock delight of taking flesh and blood and 
yet without a legal bond to justify the act, or a Jessica to plead 
for justice- or mercy. 

Once a Nebraska bill passed, if submitted to, the next move 
will be, if Senator Douglass, in his inflation, deems it likely to 
strike for a few presidential votes, to try another scheme. Such 
a politician has audacity and presumption for any attempt. He 
may next introduce a bill to grant to any citizen, if he can show 
his ability to support him, to catch an Indian and hold him as 
property. Cotton, which is the southerner's hydra headed justi- 
fication of slavery, is not more desirable than gold; the yield is 
not less tempting; and Indians belong to the gold regions. It 
would be an easy matter to persuade a few senators that God 
Almighty intended them as slaves, that they run wild in the for- 
rest with other savage beasts, and would be much happier if 
tamed and put to work in the mines, subject to such gentle and 
humane chastisement as, from generation to generation, their 
merciful owners might think proper "under the peculiar institu- 
tions" to inflict upon them. 

Fellow citizens of the glorious west, you have the finest sec- 
tion of our continent, the Eden of the union. Yearly, a half 
a million of your countrymen are wending their way to unite 
with you in developing the resources of boundless riches and 



Comments on the SWbraska BUI. 53 

consequent content which are to glaildcn your hearts ami njakc 
after generations happy in the hixuriant fertility of the future. 
Father-land of many races, to be united under one banner of 
liberty; and may it be free from the smallest speck of peculiar 
oppression. Blessings unparalleled at no distant day will call 
forth your united voices in praise and gratitude to (Jod. 

And as you must cherish the wish to rise in all the splendor 
and purity of national character, with one uniteil impulse banish 
from your soil th.it greatest of all curses, slavery. Let your 
adopted land be the land of the free, and consequently of the 
brave. To escape the grasp of tyranny ar.d political oppression, 
you left the land of your atl'ections, of happy associations, en- 
deared by the memory of parting tears, the land of forefathers; 
and bade adieu to deep-souled nationality, and all, '' to come to 
America," to enjoy in these United States, unrestrained freedom 
in its most mercitul attributes. Do not then, we beseech you, 
blight the fair prospects before you, but let your sympathies 
mingle with the free north, and say, *' We will make no more 
concessions, nor shall slavery pollute the soil, or the glad home 
of the western man." But faithful to the declaration of inde- 
pendence, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, 
with the means of acquiring, possessing anil protecting proper- 
ty, and the pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety, as natu- 
ral rights of man; so will you live in freedom, die in freedom, 
and as far as lies in the power of man transmit to your children 
its inestimable glories. The hardships which may have crossed 
the path of many in their emigration, will thus be rewarded by 
rich blessings. 

It is a kind provision of proviiknce that in freedom there is 
no night without a morning. To the man of industry, as we 
have shown, there is no misery without a ray of hope. No des- 
pair without, in the vista of industry, its consolation, its joys, 
yet no hope without a love in God, and an exercise of mercy, 
faith and charity — the sunbeams of futurity. But these belong 
not to slavery. 

Born beyond the evil displays of slavery, you have come in 
our midst to legislate for your own happiness, and the happiness 



54 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

of ages to 'come; Avilh hearts unused to the |,horriil abuses of 
slave inhumanity; we have a right to look upon your coming to 
our shores, from Europe's varied nations, as we look upon the 
beautiful and varied colors of the rainbow, the promise of 
heaven. 

The great statesman of our age, who can never sleep in the 
memory of his country, has truly said: "As far as experience 
may show errors in our establishment, we are bound to correct 
them; and if any practices exist contrary to the principles of 
justice and humanity within the reach of our laws or our influ- 
ence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain 
and abolish them." — Webster. 

It must be evident to every reader of the history and forma- 
tion of our government, that from the first proceedings of the 
confederation, slavery, by implication, was to cease, for the words 
slave or slavery are not mentioned in the constitution, and Mr. 
Madison defined why it was not — that he would never consent 
to property in man. Mr. Madison was the leading great states- 
man of the south. 

^A general emancipation was then looked for from the states- 
New York and the north liberated their slaves, after performing 
service for a specified number of years. In 1807, the law of the 
United States was passed to go into effect in 1808; when the 
slave trade under the American flag was denounced as piracy, 
under the penalty of death; and reserving the right to regulate 
emigration between the states. It could not have been imagined 
that slavery was to form any part of our system,'when omitted 
intentionally, even "to be mentioned in the constitution," and 
the more so, when so great a horror of its brutality was enter- 
tained as to inflict the punishment of death, as for piracy, even 
for trading with countries where the trade was legally authorized, 
as from Africa to the Brazils. It could not then, consistently, 
have been expected that we should continue slavery in the Uni- 
ted States of the worst kind, by the most brutal classes, the ne- 
gro traders, selling, bartering and separating families, and with- 
out the slightest restraint upon the traffic; while all others to be 
hanged if caught on the ocean. Death, the most ignominious, 



Comments on the JSTebraska Bill. 



1)0 



abroad, as piracy, while ;i virtue to be tolerated (in the United 
States), at lioiue. Our Jbreign le<j;islatii)n (iisplavinir an jiit of 
mercy to aid the cause of huinaiiily, our domestic legislation lo 
aid cupidity in "our peculiar institutions." And this, too, after 
the south had petitioned, as a colony, the mother country to 
abolish slavery. No such policy, as continuing slavery, was the 
intention of our great patriots of those days, all men of extra- 
ordinary purity of character and powerful minds. Had any such 
intention existed, the words slave and slavery would have figured 
in the constitution. So important a feature would not have been 
overlooked, entirely overlooked. But the statesmen of the souih 
themselves, all unhesitatingly expressed the conviction of an 
early emancipation by legislative general action of all the slates. 

The right to regulate emigration from state to state was exer- 
cised by congress. Congress then had authority over slavery. 
As the constitution does not recognize slavery, where are to be 
found the guarantees so often claimed by the south as existing 
under the constitution? Mr. Madison, one of the ablest states- 
men of this country, or of any other country, a name which his 
native state, Virginia, has ever deservedly honored, and whose 
talents have been the admiration of the entire union, objected to 
slave or slavery appearing in the constitution, and they did not 
appear. Slavery was not then recognized by the constitution, 
the omission was not an accident, but an intention, and was so 
at the time expressed. Cotton unexpectedly was introduced in 
the south, and gave rise to a lucrative culture, the negro rose 
rapidly in price; the north had in good faith passed laws for 
emancipation. 

The south, in all its then and now chivalry, in bad faith n- 
tained their negroes in slavery, and acted with slavery as it it 
had been part of the constitution. By the emancipation of the 
northern negroes, the negroes of the south, of course, advanced 
in price in intrinsic value; and the capitalist of the north (who 
•wished to adopt the cotton culture), and many did, had to pur- 
chase negroes of the southerner, at a very g;eat ud\aiice. This 
advance was so much extra, in favor of the south. A conse- 
quent monopoly and enorniDus bounty to the south, and the 



56 Comments on the JVebraska Bill. 

pulling of duties, in the first instance, on cotton and on the im- 
port of sugars, also became a bounty in favor of slave labor, 
which the free states had mainly to pay for. Thus, from 1808 
to this date, 1854, for 46 years, the south have had an exclusive 
monopoly of negro labor; not a trade, confined to the original 
old states, but a greatly enlarged area, by the acquisition of 
other territory. Yet the north has, we are told, invaded south- 
ern rights! Any one who will calculate the sale of the Virginia 
negro traffic (to say nothing of the other states), will find that 
this Flanders mare, this negro mother, so exalted in other respects, 
has been carrying on a commerce of breeding to an enormous 
extent; and yet, like her own horse leech, seeks more, more, 
more, and will so seek till the resurrection comes, and the entire 
American continent is covered with its dark brood of oppression, 
and all its varied shades of southern admixture, unless the white 
population either divide the state or abolish slavery, or slavery 
be abolished by the call of a general convention. 

The boast of slavery is the boast of selfishness; bitter as it is, 
and under the best circumstances must be, yet in the United 
States it is more of a curse, than in any other part of the earth. 
Here, the slave debased himself, is called daily to behold the in- 
telligence and luxury of others, which he may never hope to 
enjoy. We make them minister to our wants, and then we sell 
them; or we instruct them in the precepts of our religion, and 
then we sell them; or we sit down with them at the same holy 
communion, and receive with them the emblems of redeeming 
mercy, and then we sell them. The Arab and the Bedouin of 
the forest and the desert, or the Turk, were never so inhuman. 
Are not these United States misnamed, vhen we speak of the 
land of the free? 

In Egypt, slavery exists no more. In Turkey, it exists no 
more. In Arabia and Persia, it exists no more. In all civilized 
Europe it exists no more. In the Danish and French and Eng- 
lish colonies it exists no more. In all the new American 
republics iv exisl;^ j;o ini>:\'-. in the BiaziJs aid Cuba it still 
exists; but the negro, if ill-treated, may enter his complaint, 
and at once he is sold to another master, at a fair average price; 



Comments on the JVebraska Bill. U7 

and if he can pay the onc-tliinl of his value, as appraised by a 
magi:itrate, he can ilenianil to hire out himself, and work for his 
freedom. In this country he is ever a slave, and his. issue arc 
slaves. He has no appeal to law. Treated as the master pleases 
— with a kind master, kimlly; with a brutal master, brutally. 

In closing these remarks, we appeal to every American, to 
every philanthropist, to every Christian, to cvt-ry man ihr nji;h 
whose veins ilows the blood of humanity — in the spirit of wis- 
dom, of love an(i meekness, yet of decision and lirmness, to 
stand up for the just rights of the oppressed, for the honor of the 
country. We call upon you to listen to the voice of God, as it 
is heard in your own conscience, as it is revealed in his word, 
and obey its dictates in this cause of freedom. We call upon 
you to ask yourselves whether, in the hour of your own death- 
struggle, which will be most soothing to your departing spirit 
— to know that you have labored for the uplifting of those 
who, by piracy, have been cast down, or to know that you have 
rivetted the galling chains of slavery, by manacling the infant, 
as it comes into the world. We call upon you to look forward to 
that last great day, which is coming alike to all, when you must 
stand before the judgment seat of Christ; and to ask yourself 
which you would there hail with the highest joy — a company of 
of spirits glorified, whom you had helped, by all proper means, 
to deliver from bondage, and ignorance, and vice, or those over 
whose sorrows you had shed no tear, over whose Avrongs you 
had felt no pang, and for whose freedom and salvation you had 
breathed no prayer. 

We may be accused of being abolitionists, free soilers, S:c., 
&c., we are neither; nor are we seekers of public office, nor 
would we accept of any. We are not the advocates of Governor 
Seward or his school, yet we freely give to him and his associ- 
ates in the Nebraska controversy, full credit and great praise, for 
his able opposition to the Nebraska attempt at cheat and infamy. 
We are northern men, with northern principles, and democrats 
opposed to slavery, but can appreciate the qualities of many 
great men, not of the north; but among such we do not place 
Senator Douglass. We admire the lofty character of such men 
5 



ih 



58 Comments on the JYehraska Bill. 

as Houston, in protecting the aborigines from an attempt at in- 
famous robbery, by a gang of land speculators, seeking more plun- 
der in this very Nebraska bill. We say to this good, old, stately, 
time-honored warrior, that his character of justice we admire, 
and shall always admire him as a liberal statesman, although he 
may entertain different opinions from ourselves; and if it de- 
pended on our acts, we would crown his head with a wreath of 
four years presidential honors. 

Mr. Webster speaking of slavery, says: ''I invoke the minis- 
ters of our religion, that it proclaim the denunciation of these 
crimes. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever there may 
be a sinner bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its 
voice, the pulpit is false to its trust ! What is it to the victim 
of this oppression when he is brought to its shores, and looks 
forth upon it for the first time, loaded with chains, and bleeding 
with stripes? What is it to him but a wide-spread prospect of 
suffering, anguish, and death! Nor do the skies smile longer, 
nor is the air longer fragrant to him — the sun is cast down 
from heaven — an inhuman and accursed traffic has cut him off 
in his manhood or in his youth, from every enjoyment be- 
longing to his being, and every blessing which his Creator in- 
tended for him," &c., &:,c. And may the beautiful sentiments of 
humanity, so truly, and so eloquently, so touchingly expressed, 
serve to light the pathway of the illustrious statesman, as he 
enters the portals of immortality; and may they, by their deep- 
toned benevolence, their warm humanity, overshadow the sanction 
given by him to the fugitive slave law, in defiance of the quota- 
tion of the memorable words of Mr. Madison, or his own opinion, 
that the original law had no reference to slavery. 

As for Stephen Arnold Douglass, we wish to him long life, 
that the first light of morning may fall upon him, and the last 
evening rays may linger upon him, so that early and late every 
passer by may stop to gaze upon him, and point to him as the 
political Jparricide, who to propitiate southern favor, raised his 
arm to stab the breathing symbol of liberty ! 



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